"Chen: What we see is the erasure of Buddhism as a religion or tradition that Asians or Asian Americans can claim or identify with."
She writes from a race-essentialist framing to a degree and that drives me crazy.
"white Americans" "white Westerners" x6
There's a sort of cultural appropriation shame being layered here---as if it's bad to have light skin and be interested in Buddhism, or adapt Buddhism to your existing worldview.
If it were non-white people who predominantly led this movement in the US, she would be praising their adaptability as they syncretized a religion to meet their needs.
And are there really no black or latino or asian practitioners of this kind of Buddhism? Of course there are.
There's a "cool" factor of foregrounding race these days and I don't think it's healthy. Westernized Buddhism isn't exclusive to any race, nor is being "Western". Why reinforce the lines between racial categories like this, further reifying them?
That said, I appreciate the critique of corporation-as-organized-religion. The decline in institutional religion in America has left exactly the void that is being filled here, but with probably more fucked up motives than your typical church. At least when you would leave your employment, you wouldn't get kicked out of your congregation. But if your employment _is_ your "congregation"...
Separation of church and work might not be a bad principle.
Jokes on the writer because Buddhism originated in India and evolved from Hinduism and spread as far as Southern Russia and Central Asia in addition to East Asia and Southeast Asia where it become popular. Ignorant people everywhere these days get to write articles who don't have basic history lessons. We learned this in high school also about Ashoka and how the Indian emperor spread Buddhism literally everywhere in the world. But whatever racists aren't known for their learning, understanding or intelligence.
Buddhism did not evolve from Hinduism, nor even from its predecessor Brahmanism (calling the place it came from India is a also a bit of a stretch, but to a lesser degree):
> We come to the conclusion that early Buddhism as a whole has developed independently from
Brahmanism, with selective influences from Brahmanism and non-Vedic spiritual movements,
altering and utilizing these influences for its own growth against its religious competition.
Somehow these arguments about cultural appropriation only ever go one way. I've never heard anyone claim that it's cultural appropriation when non-Westerners adopt -- and benefit from -- various Western schools of thought. I've never felt the urge to gate-keep, say, the germ theory of disease from non-Westerners. What right do I have to do that? What right does the author have to gate-keep Buddhism? Why do people do this? Is it insecurity?
The germ theory of disease is sprang up in many places of the world throughout history.
Setting that aside, cultural appropriation is something that just happens; it's not a moral good or bad, despite the way that it often gets talked about in culture war rants. It's an emergent phenomenon of different cultures mingling.
There are negative aspects of appropriation, such as decontextualizing something to the point of erasing its original meaning, or using it as window dressing to be "exotic," or to make fun of people. These things can feel especially crass to people when they're present in a system that denigrates or oppresses the people that they are appropriating those things from.
I can't speak for everyone, but to me it makes sense that the issue people have against appropriation of sacred customs or ornamentation of some cultures is that it seems disrespectful to the people who hold it sacred. I'm not even sure that's what the original article is saying, though.
An ironic one seen was a black person stopping and scolding a white person for wearing dreadlocks as some sort of cultural theft, but she herself was wearing a Scottish weave sweater and speaking English.
hmm...I was expecting a different context, but isn't it a bit tough to flag speaking English in a US university as appropriation ? Worse case scenario, her ancestry didn't chose to come to the US...
Was also expecting something way more Scottish from your description, when it's basically a uni-color classic cut orange sweater.
On going the other way, there is/was quite a reaction on China half-ripping off Disney (!) characters in regional parks or goods. I'd argue China making "knock-off"s or "stealing our IP" is pretty close to that as well.
Then, it's pretty hard to culturally appropriate Christianity when it's setup with a doctrine of expansion and push to fit everywhere it can. That was basically the premise of colonialism in the early days. Same way we wouldn't be crying rivers because Asians countries embraced Coca Cola.
> germ theory of disease
Hasn't that been a two-way street for basically the beginning of times ? The Silk Road was as much about exchanging theories and culture than exchanging goods. There's no discussion the very base of our own culture and science is heavily influenced by the early advancement of eastern countries.
> there is/was quite a reaction on China half-ripping off Disney (!) characters in regional parks or goods. I'd argue China making "knock-off"s or "stealing our IP" is pretty close to that as well.
Companies trying to make trademark, patent and copyright claims seems like an entirely different matter from people complaining about cultural appropriation. The former is typically by people who may have a legal basis for claiming ownership over an idea (the merits of which is a different conversation, in my opinion).
I don't get the sense that the article's author is attempting to make a copyright claim on Buddhism here. This is just ethnic turf staking.
The reaction we were seeing about China knocking off US IP wasn't all from corporations though. It was, and still is, a pretty popular sentiment I think.
On the article itself, I went through most of it, but have a very hard time being emotional about corporate culture getting crossed with institutional religious entities. I see both as kinda toxic, and if they can spend some time fighting each other we might actually get a break for once.
> White liberals prefer nonwhites to be quaint, uneducated, and poor.
I feel like this deserves a response. I am going to try to avoid veering into flame war territory, if I fail feel free to downvote/flag.
Also, I'm currently on mobile. I'll try my best on formatting and spelling, but no promises.
Ok, on to the response.
I am a white liberal. What you have listed is the last thing I want - what I want is to ensure we continue to maintain a functioning democracy, ensure that social mobility is possible for the largest number of people possible, help as many people as possible become educated, and ensure companies do not gain too much power.
Verbiage like you just used is very comparable to verbiage like ACAB and "All republicans are fascist".
> I've never heard anyone claim that it's cultural appropriation when non-Westerners adopt -- and benefit from -- various Western schools of thought.
To be fair, until very recently in history, failure to convert to Christianity and assimilate into the colonial culture was illegal and practicing one's native culture or even speaking the language could get one killed. On the other hand, one could only assimilate so far before the pitchforks came out. Contrast that to today where if you transgress a cultural boundary, somebody might exercise their free speech in your general direction. It is a pretty one-way thing, but us white westerners aren't being oppressed.
We are not being oppressed, but we are being irritated a lot. And a lot of us (not me) are voting for Trump, Le Pen, AfD etc. So the overall effect of “Race Grievance Theory” is quite counterproductive.
There's about 500 years of history that thoroughly explain why it is not considered appropriation when non-Western people adopt Western practices. Lots of things only "go one way" when we are dealing with massive power imbalances.
This is a really vague answer. Can you elaborate? What happened 500 years ago that explains why the authors are right in their attempt to ban certain ethnic groups from certain ideas?
What about all the other times a dominant force occupied lands that weren't theirs? That's like... all of history. So are we going to cancel Roman and ancient Mongolian influence too? Or what about the time natives of north america wiped out whoever occupied it before them?
Let's apply that same reasoning on a different scale.
Rome violently occupied most of Europe and forced its culture on to those peoples. Therefore, most Europeans may eat as much pizza as they like. But if an Italian so much as looks at a croissant or wears pants, they've done A Cultural Appropriation.
Your example would stand if Rome was the #1 economic power, was also the #1 producer of movies in the world, exported it's myths and culture all around the world all year long, forced their neighboring countries into trade partnerships to make sure Rome's products (including their music, movies, beverages etc.) weren't blocked from competing with local products.
Then yes, people could be pissed at Rome companies also producing "Rome croissant" that were to globally compete with French croissants and take their place on other countries' shelves.
This doesn't explain why I as an individual cannot adopt and adapt non-Western perspectives, values, and religious beliefs. Why should the actions of people long dead to whom I bear no relation other than shared skin color mean that I have to go to contortions to avoid adopting valuable ideas into my own life?
So, if I'm from a western country that was occupied, colonised and had a foreign culture forced upon it, it would not be considered appropriation if I were to adopt non-western schools of thought?
If that hypothetical makes you happy, sure. But I think most people can easily tell the difference between the widespread colonization that occurred for hundreds of years and whatever historical anomalies you have in mind with that leading question.
> But I think most people can easily tell the difference between the widespread colonization that occurred for hundreds of years and whatever historical anomalies you have in mind with that leading question.
I was referring to Ireland, whose colonisation[1][2] during the 16th and 17th centuries served almost as a prototype for future British expansion. Gaelic culture was nearly wiped out due to British policies, and even to this day, Irish is a severely endangered language. It remains the one of the few regions in Europe with a lower population in the present than it had in 1800.
No one ever said there wasn't West-on-West subjugation. There's a rich history of that, too. But that is not what we historically consider to be the multi-hundred year era of colonization than killed untold millions and impacted the lives of almost every non-Western person on the planet.
I'm sorry, but on what basis, other than geographical location, are you differentiating between the colonization of Ireland and other British colonies?
> But that is not what we historically consider to be the multi-hundred year era of colonization than killed untold millions and impacted the lives of almost every non-Western person on the planet.
Ok. So again, I ask: what's the difference? There was a seizure of lands, systematic eradication of culture and language over the course of several hundred years, mass discrimination, and millions killed in conflicts and famine. What part of that makes it distinct from other instances of colonization?
When you say non-Western, you really do mean non-White, correct? I feel as if there's a racial bush being beaten around here that one may as well go and point out.
The point I think you're trying to make is that different rules apply for cultural appropriation for white people than they do for people of color. Would you agree?
> I feel as if there's a racial bush being beaten around here that one may as well go and point out.
Aww, why'd you have to go and point that out? I was having fun beating around that bush...
But more seriously, I would have preferred to hear that from the poster. I specifically avoided putting those words in their mouth, despite being tempted to a few times; and also to avoid getting dragged down into a debate of whatever "white" means.
I don't think she's claiming that there's anything wrong with "white buddhism". In fact, she seems to explicitly deny that view
>I want to clarify, by the way, that I’m not necessarily critical of American Buddhist entrepreneurs. The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
The idea that American Buddhism has been divided between Asian immigrants and white converts has been mainstream in buddhist studies for at least a decade or two now (and anyone who practices Buddhism in the US will see this divide immediately). This isn't anything Chen came up with on her own.
In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic double (or rather true persona) would violently emerge, utterly angry and materialistic.
This sort of attitude, at the time, was lampooned because it was limited to the upper echelons of society (sure enough, the only buddhist in my extensive family was a corporate manager). I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days.
The TV show Silicon Valley also satirises the aggressive, egotistical CEO (a character called Gavin Belson).
Belson spends some time at a Buddhist retreat which seems to impart nothing from his experience. The attraction to Buddhist ideas are only at shallow, surface level.
He also employs a full-time spiritual adviser. Even the adviser looks out for opportunities advantageous to him and manipulate situations.
It's a cynical (but honest?) look at personality traits in tech.
It also shows an opportunistic, career-driven teacher. There's a whole bit about the teacher losing his parking pass and finessing his way back into the CEOs council.
And doesn't Gavin kill someone at his Buddhist retreat?
Oh well this reminds me of a certain prime minister of a certain two letter country starting with U and ending in, K having a full time ethics adviser, which he subsequently fired...
> I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days.
I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society.
For all our social progress in this millennium, we regressed in many ways people don't readily notice. This was mostly an American thing in the past; but it spilled into Europe over time.
> I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society.
Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?
People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.
> Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?
I came of age in the late '90s. I don't think most people were offended by any of your list. A few churches would complain about gay people, but they were ridiculed for it.
> People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.
It isn't, but it's something that we had seemed to be finally moving past. It's frustrating that only a few years after casting off the oppression of religious attitudes we now seem to be diving back into much the same thing.
More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongside eugenics (alongside which it originated) as a mistaken wrong turn in the arc of progress.
[1] In a series of cases, most recently RR v. Poland, the EHCR has declined calls to overturn Poland’s near ban on abortions, deciding them on narrow grounds that the government had prevented abortions that were legal under exceptions to Polish law. It has gone only so far as to suggest there is a right in case of risk to maternal life.
What a twisted version of reality you just presented. The US has in no way, shape or form returned to the "status quo in most advanced countries". Perhaps with some convoluted rhetoric you can argue that, but in practice the difference is undeniable. Policies regarding abortion have one gone in one direction in recent decades (in both advanced and less advanced economies) and there is only a single massive outlier that has jerked aggressively back in the other direction.
You’re confusing the concept of “status quo” (the current state) with the direction of change. Roe took the US outside the mainstream among developed countries. Just a couple of years after Roe, the German constitutional court found that legalized abortion violated the Basic Law’s right to life. In the intervening decades, only a handful of other high courts recognized abortion as a right, rather than a legislative decision. The EHCR repeatedly rejected the idea, even though the EU Convention on Human Rights has an explicit right to privacy.
So yes, undoing Roe returned us to the mainstream.
"So yes, undoing Roe returned us to the mainstream."
Repeating that just makes you sound like a pedant more concerned with crafting an argument than grappling with the real world situation. In terms of abortion access, the thing actual humans care about, the US just joined the cultural hinterland in denying abortion access to a vast amount of its populace.
And prior to Dobbs the US was part of a small handful of countries that guaranteed the “right” to kill humans that had developed a face, feet, hands, and could suck their thumbs.
Abortion law requires balancing individual autonomy against a nascent human life. It’s not an issue where “progress” marches in a single direction. That’s why considering the actual legal effect of Dobbs is critical. We replaced a regime that imposes a nationwide viability standard that the majority of Americans oppose (see the second chart: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23167397/abortion-pu...) with the same regime that applies in Europe: voters decide.
Yes, the US has more parts that resemble Poland than the EU does. But, on the flip side, the Mississippi law upheld in Dobbs reflects the mainstream view in large European countries: elective abortion in the first trimester, with certain exceptions applying after that.
Many, many nations allow 2nd trimester and late term abortions, though those are always extremely rare and often have complicating circumstances. I don't tend to respect people who use the fringe case to argue the mainstream point as I find it disingenuous.
Only two EU countries allow elective abortions—what we’re talking about here—significantly into the second trimester. The Netherlands applies a viability standard similar to Roe, and Sweden draws the line at 18 weeks.
Every other EU country has found that a fetus is sufficiently developed at 12-14 weeks that its life can’t be extinguished absent extenuating circumstances. For that reason, you can’t sweep them under the rug because they’re rare compared to first trimester abortions. When society draws a moral line—and every EU country recognizes society’s right to draw a line here—we don’t just dismiss conduct in the wrong side of the line on account of it being relatively rare.
And drawing the line at 12 weeks versus viability makes a big difference. In Germany, which bans abortions after 12 weeks absent exceptions, 97% of abortions occur in the first trimester. In the Netherlands, which permits abortions to viability, only 82% of abortions occur in the first trimester. Given the 600,000 abortions annually in the US, there are likely tens of thousands of fetuses killed each year that would have been protected under German (or French or Italian or Spanish) law.
Your effort to dismiss that as a “fringe” issue underscores how far out of the mainstream Roe took us. It turned conduct that the vast majority of the EU deems illegal, which occurs likely tens of thousands of times annually, into a Constitutional “right.”
abortion has been a natural right for thousands of years. women cerainly don’t need you nor the state to intercede in what is essentially a right to bodily autonomy.
It’s as “essentially” about human life as it is about “bodily autonomy.” As to “women”—they’re voting for these laws. The Mississippi electorate that voted in the 15-week ban at issue in Dobbs had 25% more women than men. And the large majority voted Republican.
ah, well if mississippi is doing it, that just settles it once and for all i guess. diehard partisanship gets us nowhere. women wanting to coerce other women is nothing new, but it’s still against our natural rights.
and yes, it’s essentially about the woman’s life too, i agree there.
No, it doesn't settle it once and for all. It settles it once for Mississippi. Other states are free to have different laws. That's the point of Dobbs.
ordinarily, i'd agree that by the constitution anything that's not a federal concern (principally international relations and interstate disputes) is a state concern, but the constitution also notes that neither the states nor the federal government can alienate residents from natural rights. bodily autonomy is a natural right, full stop, and it need not rest on a shaky privacy-based foundation, as roe had institutionalized it.
in time, this will be a case where the court will be found to be right in the small and wrong in the large.
This might be something Americans think about legslislation, but in a European context legislation in practice is not something you just rip off, either you increment it or subtract it.
Essentially you will notice a lot of European Supreme courts and constitution is very different than usa.
But besides that, there are now calls in multiple European countries to make abortion a right.
Abortion legalization is an offshoot of the same early 20th century progressive anti-natalism as eugenics. Planned Parenthood was, of course, founded by a eugenicist. In most of the developing world, like my home country of Bangladesh, abortion is still justified primarily to avoid poor women having too many children.
There’s other justifications for it now, of course, but I’m not drawing a novel comparison here. In those hypotheticals of “what do we do that future generations will view as evil” eating meat and elective abortions are probably near the top of the list. (In both cases, I suspect technological and economic change will make us forget why we did it in the first place.)
Abortion gives women control of their body, no more reason or justification needed.
I whole-heartedly disagree with elective abortions being one of those “what do we do that future generations will view as evil” things. I think the opposite is true and that forced birth is what future generations will view as evil. Younger generations are trending pro-choice. [1]
LOL abortion has been done since before homo sapiens branched off into their own species. Christians believe that their god performs millions of abortions every day (they call them miscarriages).
Abortions are in every culture on every continent.
Claiming it stems from the 20th century is insane.
You have it wrong, future humans will look back and wonder why we didn't abort more when we clearly couldn't even meet the needs of the babies we already had.
> distinguish between a child dying of natural causes and a deliberate killing.
You must have responded in the wrong thread, since this one isn't about children. Christianity is relevant where others aren't since they're the reason everyone is having this debate in the US.
And Christians don't consider "natural causes". A foetus is either delivered by the mother, aborted by the mother, or aborted by god.
Well, what's the data on the types of pregnancies that get aborted? You could then use such data to make the argument that abortion achieves some of the same goals of eugenics, even if only loosely related in the currents that made these ideas mainstream. I predict this will become even more interesting when embryo modification becomes more popular and mainstream.
The history is that it did start that way and one of the current discussion points is whether or not to allow people to abort children that are found to have genetic abnormalities such as pre-natal screening for Down Syndrome.
Oxford Languages defines eugenics as "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable."
Of course the unspoken corollary here is that to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics one must prevent the reproduction of undesirable heritable characteristics.
It's plainly obvious to many of us today that such a policy is dangerous if we decide to select on characteristics such as color of skin, but as the GP says, maybe in 50 years we will find that people with Down Syndrome will consider today's approved abortions for their condition to be just as barbaric.
>Oxford Languages defines eugenics as "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable."
So, for abortion to be a eugenics project, they should be arranged by some central governing body - a "board of eugenics" or "baby optimization committee" if you will - and not simply done by the choice of each pregnant person. Maybe you could argue that a high-level propaganda campaign could have the same effect, but that's beyond the realm of the legislative or judicial branches of government, and possibly beyond government entirely.
I think the biggest implication of any type of abortion being outlawed is that it subjects all pregnant people to the potential violence of the state on behalf of anyone close enough to know about their pregnancy. Add to this the massive grey areas introduced by the base rate of miscarriage, drugs that can be used for multiple things including abortion, what defines a threat to the life of the mother, and you've got a recipe for endless justifications for violations of privacy, bodily autonomy, and completely arbitrary prosecutions of uterus-havers.
There is no requirement for Government to be involved in eugenics given the definition I quoted -- you put that forward as assumed, but you recognize that it can happen beyond government entirely.
I would suggest that eugenics could also happen at a local level. Specifically for the only argument I am making here, a mother deciding not to have a child that is likely to have Down Syndrome.
This is an example of non-government enforced hyper local eugenics that is currently seen as okay but maybe in 50 to 100 years may be seen as barbaric the way that we currently see the idea of aborting babies based on the color of their skin.
As another commenter noted, the reasons that some people choose to abort their children would likely be cheered as a good example of eugenics in practice from the perspective of a historical eugenics loving evil caricature of your choice. If we're being charitable, we might term this "accidental eugenics".
Given what you have written, I believe I may presume that we are both on the same page that you would potentially be upset if the government forced people to get abortions for eugenics purposes as well, but perhaps I am wrong on that.
Regardless, I am not making any arguments for or against abortion here; rather, I am arguing first that there is some necessary overlap between abortion and eugenics and second that our current view of which kinds of eugenics are acceptable may be found to be distasteful to people in the future who are even more progressive than ourselves.
They say Sparta practiced eugenics with late-term abortions according to legend though we don't have any physical evidence of this to my quick search. Wikipedia offers this quotation as a source[0]
Haeckel, Ernst (1876). "The History of Creation, vol. I". New York: D. Appleton. p. 170. "Among the Spartans all newly born children were subject to a careful examination or selection. All those that were weak, sickly, or affected with any bodily infirmity, were killed. Only the perfectly healthy and strong children were allowed to live, and they alone afterwards propagated the race."
Sparta was a small, barbaric slave city state that after a flash in the sun, quickly faded into obscurity due to its ossified economic and political structures.
There's six orders of magnitude more people who have lived in political, and ethical systems over those thousands of years that had nothing to do with Sparta. I'm not sure why you are cherrypicking needles out of haystacks, but it's as much a fallacy as pointing out that since Ghenghis Khan wore pants, ergo, pants are evil.
I'm not sure what you think my position is as you seem to be arguing past me about something else completely.
My position is that I agree with a specific claim of the GP whose exact words were "A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongside eugenics (alongside which it originated) as a mistaken wrong turn in the arc of progress."
The specific parts that I agree with are that:
1) Abortion and Eugenics are related and originated somewhat together, and
2) 100 years from now Abortion as a Right instead of as Legislation may be seen as a wrong turn much like Eugenics is now
In your first response to me you only addressed point #1 by stating erroneously that "Abortion has a millennium-long history that precedes eugenics". I clarified in my response that I meant "recent history" in which Abortion and Eugenics were very intertwined; however, I also provided a link to a Wikipedia page that starts out telling us that Plato in Ancient Greece was a proponent of Eugenics which shows that concept also has a millenium long history. I didn't quote that section, but instead, I quoted a section referring to the legendary tales of Sparta engaging in eugenics and late term abortion.
In your second response you failed to read the source link I provided detailing the history of Eugenics and pick up on your mistake; instead, you have gone down some strange argument disparaging Sparta and claiming I am cherry picking needles out of haystacks.
It doesn't matter that you view Sparta as a "barbaric slave city state" which "faded into obscurity" -- that doesn't change the fact that they are a millenia old example of eugenics and potentially very late term abortions.
Even if it did, none of this works to refute my position that possibly 100 years from now Abortion as a Right instead of as Legislation may be seen as a wrong turn much like Eugenics is now. The specific example I gave of Down Syndrome stands as a current issue that may turn into a future view of our current peoples as barbaric for aborting babies with Down Syndrome.
Do you have any arguments against that, or do you think I'm just anti-abortion in general and you're having a general argument with me about abortion? Because I am neither anti-abortion nor am I arguing against abortion.
There's certainly a certain relation between them. What's more, as genetic screening of early-term pregnancies becomes more common, the inevitable abortions that result due to real or perceived defects or other random personal reasons are things that many eugenicists of the past would have probably been keenly interested in, and even applauded in certain ways.
Abortion has existed since before recorded history. Eugenics is 150 years old at most. I certainly wouldn't advance such a dishonest and immoral argument and it certainly illustrates why people like you should have little input into the definition of civil rights or society in general.
It looks like you need to edit the wikipedia page on the history of eugenics[0] because it is claiming that Plato was a proponent of eugenics and he was born over 2000 years ago which seems like a lot more than 150.
Similarly, you might want to contact Stanford so they can update the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is the source for the above statement.
The way you are gatekeeping people while subtly insulting them makes me thankful that you are defending everyone's rights because you are so clearly thoughtful of everyone and forgiving.
[1] Eugenics". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University. Jul 2, 2014. Retrieved January 2, 2015.
I doubt that a century from now, eugenics and fundamental body autonomy will be spoken of in the same breath, despite the intervening efforts to conflate the two.
I don't think it's worth to be outraged, logically. After all, if the manager can stay calm and all, that means he's close to attain (or one step closer to attain) buddhahood, which is a very difficult thing to attain.
If you read Italian, I'd recommend tracking down his short comedy novel L'Uomo di Marketing e la Variante al Limone, which satirizes the milanese advertising industry of the '90s (but I bet it's still mostly like that, lol).
Jobs wasn't really like that as in "zen and care for personal wellbeing" at the start and then switching to "angry and materialistic". He seemed to combine a fairly consistent zen like focus, more on great objects like the iPhone rather than care for people, and a fairly consistent edge of angry materialism. It didn't really flip from one thing to the other.
In the 21st century, in the West, "Buddhism" is treated as a set of stress-relief techniques and slogans.
This isn't strictly limited to the West: at least two of Taiwan's Four Great Mountains (i.e. schools of Buddhism) are similarly inclined, with additional cultish elements thrown in for good measure.
The cultish elements had already developed independently within corporate cultures, but adding Buddhist slogans and techniques (rather than the philosophical and devotional elements), has given it a new edge.
Buddhist cults focus on fate, inevitability, acceptance, detachment. You are helpless against the world, which by the way, works the way we say, because we are the enlightened bearers of the great tradition. And because of this helplessness, here's a set of doctrines you should follow. Corporate Buddhism additionally tries to appropriate mindfulness as "focusing on work".
And, yes, that stuff is historically there, in Buddhism. It's present in many many of the fractally complex historical branches of the Buddhist taxonomic tree. But too many people only ever see one leaf on that tree, and think "oh so this is Buddhism".
Except Buddhism is also a philosophy of action, and a set of guides for correct action. Acting rightly entails seeing rightly, and so Buddhism includes an appreciation for and guide towards empirical inquiry. This was always terrifying to authority figures, and Asia only didn't develop modern science first because Buddhist logic and experimentation were among the casualties of The Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars.
And here, in the 21st century culture of global megacorporations, we see this pattern again; the pleasant, passive parts of Buddhism are allowed in, while pretending the other parts don't exist.
But Buddhism did have rebellious warrior monks. Ashoka, the greatest Buddhist King, made it clear that the law would be enforced, and his borders protected. Acting correctly always requires brutality towards oppressors, but this part of Buddhism is unpalatable within corporate culture.
A friend of mine was concerned about a similar (mis)use of psychedelics in the service of productivity. Except that neither Buddhism, nor psychedelics discriminate in the kind of insights you end up with. So as workers are encouraged to boost creativity through microdosing, employers might be surprised to see some employees quit after they got curious, took a bit too much Ayahuasca one weekend, like it's described in some part of the microdosing forum, and started reevaluating their life as a result.
Similarly with mindfulness, first you dip your toes with some guided stuff, organized twice a week by HR. Next thing you know YouTube is suggesting you check out this Osho guy and Thich Nhat Hanh, where you find out you've only been scratching the surface. Then one day you quit your job because it disagree with your conception of right action.
I'm always amazed to see westerners, who are otherwise very weary of cultish behavior within Christian denominations, embrace and praise Eastern cults.
Osho is not a wise man, given his actions.
Thich Nhat Hanh deserves history's attention.
A horrible and oppressive introduction to Buddhism is actually worse than no introduction.
I suppose wisdom is in the eye of the beholder, as it should be. One perspective is that teachers come in many forms and always have something to impart. You take some of what they offer and leave some, but you stay on your own path.
Regarding Osho specifically, I might not have heard or read enough from him, but I have yet to come across something he's said or wrote personally, that contradicts anything said by the likes of TNH or J.Krishnamurti. And vice versa. His life has concluded, and with hindsight it's easy enough for anyone to put his words and actions in the context of his times and to deliberate as to the rightfulness of thence judgments. If you've avoided his words based on popular sentiments, do yourself a favor, listen for yourself and make up your own mind.
> Similarly with mindfulness, first you dip your toes with some guided stuff, organized twice a week by HR. Next thing you know YouTube is suggesting you check out this Osho guy and Thich Nhat Hanh, where you find out you've only been scratching the surface. Then one day you quit your job because it disagree with your conception of right action.
Yep. and five years later i'm working for non-profits making a quarter of what i used to while watching my old friends climb the tech career ladders and buy multiple properties in the bay area. and doing a far stretch better than I was when i got exposed to MBSR.
> Except Buddhism is also a philosophy of action, and a set of guides for correct action. Acting rightly entails seeing rightly, and so Buddhism includes an appreciation for and guide towards empirical inquiry. This was always terrifying to authority figures, and Asia only didn't develop modern science first because Buddhist logic and experimentation were among the casualties of The Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars.
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations includes a sentence that, in a translation I read long ago and no longer have, read something like:
"You can pass your life in calm flow of happiness—if you learn to think the right way, and to act the right way."
It took me way too long to realize that the "think the right way" is, by far, the easier part, and how dangerous it can be without the "act the right way". It also feels better. Fresher. Trendier. The "act the right way" looks and feels an awful lot like following all the advice your grandpa gave you. Very "gods of the copy-book headers" stuff. And isn't as immediately gratifying as the "think the right way" bit.
> Buddhist cults focus on fate, inevitability, acceptance, detachment. You are helpless against the world, which by the way, works the way we say, because we are the enlightened bearers of the great tradition. And because of this helplessness, here's a set of doctrines you should follow.
Reading this, it struck me how closely this fits with the popularity of Lovecraftian fiction in our current era. If we see corporations as monolithic, inhuman, malignant entities that trample humans simply for being in the way, with little concern for consequences for themselves (because "they" are too far beyond "us", too big to fail), and if we see the universe as ultimately not even apathetic towards humans, because there is no mind there at all, just incomprehensible vastness that swallows us all in eventual oblivion -- then this superficial Buddhist take makes a great deal of sense. An inevitable fate, nothing to do but accept it and detach ourselves to try to minimize the unpleasantness.
But then, accepting this perspective personally makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy for oneself.
I always find it weird how western "promoters" of Buddhism are so gung-ho on the meditation part, pretty much disregarding everything else.
Having met quite a few Buddhists (also my partner) who were raised by Buddhist parents, I'm yet to find a single one who meditates at all. That's not even that big of a part of "mindfulness".
After reading a monk's book (Essential Chan Buddhism by Guo Jun), I have a feeling it's all cargo-cultish in the west.
It's not just a Western thing. The likes of Goenka have made the case for Vipassana meditation as a universally beneficial secular practice compatible with a variety of religious beliefs and amenable to scientific study in India too. This approach inevitably attracts more attention and new adherents than more longstanding cultural traditions, rules and suttas.
I asked a friendly volunteer outside the Global Vipassana Centre (which emphasises the secular universal nature of its meditation practices, but also contains holy relics of the Buddha) how often he personally meditated. He paused for a moment, looked a bit sheepish and then said "not very often".
Is there any kind of documentation of how modern religions are experienced by normal practitioners? A book [edit: or, more realistically, a book series] would be great, but some kind of film documentary series seems to me like an even better fit. I've gone looking for that sort of thing in the past and come up empty-handed. I'm thinking interviews and a combo of descriptions or footage of any religious practices or services that aren't considered too secret or sacred or whatever to allow outsiders to see it.
It's easy to find teachings and scattered accounts of some elements, but I'd be very interested in this kind of thing even for relatively familiar-to-me things like various Christian sects (to be any good, this would surely need a bunch of entries for every major religion, including Buddhism, because there are so many difference in how they're experienced by different traditions or in different cultures)
Material about priestly or monastics experience of religions is easy to find, but the experience of lay practitioners and their views on the religion (which may differ a lot from what the priests or monastics say) seems harder to come by, especially any kind of systematic or cohesive treatment rather than just scattered pieces here and there.
The thing that fascinated me was his exploration of the realness of experience among practitioners and where that experience seems to comes from.
As a child of Christian fundamentalism who ran away as fast as I could, it was eye opening to start to see the basis on which many of these religions were founded, which religion manifesting as a symptom of something deeper within ourselves. Not a mystical or metaphysical deeper, but remnants of tens of thousands of years of evolution and humanity’s wrestling with consciousness and meaning.
There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice. Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain.
To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
> There are many varieties of Buddhism. It is a mixture of eastern culture and knowledge in general, including many generations of empirical psychotherapy, religion, philosophy, etc. Some varieties of Buddhism, like some schools of Zen, do focus heavily (or entirely) on meditation practice.
Zen does not traditionally focus heavily nor entirely on meditation practise, for example it has a heavy amount of ritual and chanting. The idea of a return to Zen being just meditation is a modern resistance in the early 20th century by certain Japanese teachers (many of whom brought Zen to the west) who thought that the spiritual aspects of the tradition had been lost entirely to public service rituals (basically becoming "the people who do funerals" in Japanese society). I agree with those modern teachers, but it isn't representative of Japanese Zen in general, and certainly not of Chan, Seon, or Thien.
Overall there is no Buddhist lineage over a century old that I'm aware of that has its primary focus on meditation.
> Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain.
I don't see how that's relevant to the rest of your comment. It seems kind of like a subtle materialism insert.
> To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
That's not really true, since all forms of Buddhism require some kind of "blind faith". For example, in Zen we have the three pillars of Zen practise: great faith, great doubt, and great endurance. Great faith means that we should have faith in our practise and Buddha-nature, even if we have not yet realised it directly. Letting go is an act of faith after all. There are purely faith-based sects of Buddhism, like Pure Land, or like Tibetan Buddhism (not well in my realm of knowledge) which generally has more faith required than Zen, and I think you'll be surprised how popular those traditions are in the west. I don't personally see western thought as being incompatible with dogma or faith at all
> Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
I agree, there is a lack of good teachers and instructions, but I want to point the finger more at the students than at the teachers. They don't want to learn, they don't want to practise. They want a quick release or an easy way out. If a doctor prescribes a mindfulness program to a patient struggling with anxiety, it's an absolute miracle if they stick at it for even 10 minutes a day for more than a year. Doubly so for the ethical principles, which are even harder to stick to (as I know from personal experience). The problem isn't so much that Buddhist principles are bastardised, it's more that very few people have a strong intent to follow them. That's why the faith based practises above are generally so useful for the laity: Pure Land Buddhism can be done by anyone at any time, you simply recite the nembutsu (namo amida butsu) whenever you remember. It isn't clear to me what an equivalently easy and straightforward practise would look like for someone who can't handle the faithful aspects
> Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
I think the idea of equating a Buddhist who doesn't meditate to a Christian who doesn't go to church is a bit strange, since likely you think that it is somewhat essential for the latter to go to church, and therefore do you think that meditation is essential for Buddhism? I don't quite get this point
> Overall there is no Buddhist lineage over a century old that I'm aware of that has its primary focus on meditation.
Do you mean specifically in Japan? Because many of the Tibetan lineages have Dzogchen [1] or Mahamudra [2] meditation as their primary focus and go back a thousand plus years. There are even lineages of householder or itinerant yogis called Ngagpa [3] that have long traditions of meditation training, going back to Tilopa, Saraha, and the other Mahasiddhas of Bengal. I practice with a Tibetan Ngagpa from time to time (Dr Nida) [4] and have also gotten a chance to practice with a Baul teacher from modern Bengal [5], and it's interesting to note how even though the lineages have split in their outward appearances, there are quite a lot of similarities in their teaching of meditation.
Anyway, that's all to say that in many Tibetan Buddhist lineages the meditation practice has been an unbroken, primary focus of the teachings. It wouldn't be surprising if that wasn't the case in other traditions.
Oh, no need for apologies, I was just wanting to clarify a bit -- thanks!
Speaking of Theravada, I read a book recently that might interest you about some of the less known meditation practices in their history [1]. Some of the formulations the author writes about reminds me a lot of various Vajrayana methods and "signs" that are taught. The Thai forest tradition of Theravada was my first encounter with formal meditation practice and the first samatha technique I learned from it has a lot of overlap with things I later encountered in atiyoga. Which makes a lot of sense, the traditions are a lot more syncretic and interconnected than many modern teachers would lead you to believe.
Historically, it's because of imperialism. Buddhism, for a long time, had turned into a faith religion, suffered many close encounters with dying out completely in several regions, resulting in the 3 major traditions of Buddhism we see today, the earliest version of Buddhism died out long ago.
When Western imperial forces began to systematically take over regions of Asia for trade, the Buddhist monks in areas such as Burma/Myanmar felt that this was the second time their tradition would die out, and sought to preserve the parts that they felt were essential. In their case, it was the path of vipassana meditation, and though Buddhism didn't die out there, from then on it was strongly influenced by this more refined, less faith-driven teaching.
So when Westerners started to go over to these regions of Asia, this is what they were taught, not the religious faith of the local lay practitioners, which existed mainly to support the monks in their vipassana.
I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism”
I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, continue to have them even at work.
But it is a genuinely off putting sensation to see someone referring to cultural exchanges and transformations as “appropriation”. Adopting and transforming ideas is the bedrock of humanity. Opposing or denigrating this seems like a fundamentally evil thing to do. It feels anti human.
I had a coworker recently tell me I was culturally appropriating the Buddha (I'm a Buddhist) presumably because I am "from the West". Apart from being one of the most offensive things I've ever been told (before anyone jumps on me for this: I can still observe it as offensive regardless of my attachment to the offense) it confirmed for me that whatever is going on in the US with identity politics has jumped the shark.
You do not need to be of a skin color, creed, gender or class to take refuge in the Buddha's teachings. The dharma is for all.
Indeed. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on the word “appropriate” , “to make it your own.” Basically the more academic wording of “you made this? I made this.” meme.
As long as you don’t pretend you created Buddhism or are an infallible authority of Buddhism it’s not appropriation.
Personally I find the word not really appropriate with what we are trying to convey which I assume would be something along the lines of “disrespectful usage of other peoples cultures or practices.”
There is no inappropriate way to use clothes you own, unless you're using it to strangle someone. The people who get upset about people wearing things from "their" culture are always deracinated diaspora with no real connection to the culture. People who are healthily embedded in a culture don't get upset about foreigners "misusing" their cultural bric-a-brac, they have real lives to attend to. And if you're getting upset at a party goer wearing a grass skirt then you're in need of psychiatric help.
What an inane comparison. Jobs are voluntary, and you're free to quit over the dress code.
And there's no way to decide what's "permitted" use of a piece of apparel anyways. Cultural significance changes within cultures, and individuals within it are not uniformly sensitive to informal use. What would you do to iconoclasts? They're culturally appropriating too. Are they allowed to introduce lighthearted use?
The "cultural appropriation" idea is the worst form of ultra-conservative hand wringing dressed up in progressive language. No actual harm is done by "misusing" clothes. This is just an excuse made up by moral busy bodies to go on yet another obnoxious crusade.
Yes that is the motte to this bailey. Of course the actual consequences can range from being fired to being expelled to being publicly defamed as a racist. You still haven't given a way to decide what is or isn't a faux pas. I'll give the answer since you won't: it's whoever complains the loudest. In practice what is and isn't allowed is totally arbitrary. The only people who ever argue for that are power tripping moral crusaders.
As a reminder, all of this is about a pretend problem that produces no damage and has no victims.
I also find it funny. I wonder if that’s why bodhidharma spent so long in the cave, to stop all those Han Chinese appropriating his mind bending techniques of not being a dickhead and sitting quietly observing life ;)
If someone said that to me (also a Buddhist) I would probably burst out laughing :)
She says that meditation is for some monastic elites, but that is far from the truth. Who even chose to publish her book?
Buddha himself said to Ananda that several thousand of his household desciples attained Nirvana. Not only did these "laymen" did meditation, they even attained Nirvana.
> She says that meditation is for some monastic elites
She did not quite say that. She said that it was only practiced by monastic elites up until the early 20th century:
"Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Buddhist practice. Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics."
> You do not need to be of a skin color, creed, gender or class to take refuge in the Buddha's teachings. The dharma is for all.
Agreed on all points! The Buddha's teachings are foundational to my world view, and I too am "from the West."
I do want to push back a little bit though (gently). Your coworker's critique is not necessarily wrong (even if they were making it from a place of ignorance). When I was a practicing Zen Buddhist, I saw a lot of teachers appropriating the dharma to sell their own teachings. Buddhist teachers consulting on the side to corporations (selling the teachings is inappropriate in Buddhism), starting companies to sell services, etc. The teachings were so far removed from the original ideas that they are incomprehensible. Vague spiritual statements, go with your gut morality, confusing dialog, going through the motions (rituals) was all that mattered. How could it be any other way? The West's values are counter to the teachings in just about everyway possible. It could not possibly be transmitted to the West without this kind of modification.
Cultural appropriation has happened with every culture Buddhism has encountered from it's origins in North India, through China and Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan, and now the West. We all have changed it somewhat and now claim what we have is more original than the original.
However, none of these adaptations can compare with the basic insight of the original teachings in my opinion.
Until your get a call from HR, the twitter mobs decides to target you, or when that "woke" person gets promoted and starts dictating policies in the office.
I think the key point is that it becomes "appropriation"--vs cultural mixing or exchange--when the ideas are removed of their source context and used in a way that is contrary or even disrespectful of their original intent.
I'm far from an expert, but it seems like a reasonable argument to advance that the linkage of Buddhist practices with corporate and material advancement--and the removal of spiritual or ethical content--is "appropriation", and not merely respectful mixing.
"Jazz drew from ragtime, also “coded” Black, but ragtime drew from marches, drawn in great measure from white men John Philip Sousa and (eep) Wagner."[1]
In your view, is this appropriation or cultural mixing or exchange?
I wasn't claiming to be the authority on what's "appropriation." I was pointing out that the poster--who admitted he didn't read the article past the subheadline[1]--doesn't seem to understand how people use the term "appropriation."
That said, since you asked, no, it's never occurred to me that jazz is appropriation.
[1] Amusingly, the folks who admit to not actually, you know, reading the thing they are debating, are the ones who claim to be defending the free exchange of ideas. I think. Or maybe they're just angry online.
The exact same thing can be said about anything. Judaism appropriated pre existing ideas and disrespected them by insisting on a single god. Christianity appropriated judaism and disrespected it by removing covenant practices such as circumcision and adding new ideas such as the kingdom of heaven being available to anyone not just “the chosen people”. Islam appropriated christianity and disrespected it by demoting Jesus from the son of god to a mere prophet.
This is how ideas work. And it’s not just religion. Think of left wing thought. The original communist ideology was revolutionary. Social democrats appropriated ideas from them but believe working within the system. Many hard left people despise social democrats and believe they do more harm than good.
Islam is Christianity that goes “back to the roots” X Buddhism from Afghanistan/Eastern Persia (including the pilgrimage and washing ritual). Trinitarianism is only one branch of Christianity and not the main one. It was delicately made into the main one much later.
The original communist ideology wasn't original at all. The roots go back at least to the time of the Gracchi in Rome.
It's clear hardly anyone commenting here has any idea what appropriation really is. It's not just disrespecting existing cultures.
It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable commodity.
The purpose isn't to spread the original culture but to use the trappings to promote the usual Western corporate neoliberal value system.
Corporate Buddhism is a perfect example. It's clearly a lot more corporate than Buddhist. The goal isn't enlightenment, detachment, or compassion, it's cultural conformity with the aim of increased productivity and a higher share price.
This shouldn't be controversial. All you need to do is look at how people behave to see what motivates them.
> It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable commodity.
Sort of like the monarchies of Europe have been turned into republics in all but name, the culture of “divine right of kings” destroyed but the trappings of monarchy are still used but devoid of meaning. And often used as marketing material.
But, surely you don’t yearn for the return of absolute monarchies ruled by gods appointed ruler, do you?
This is the path of humanity. Some things die off, some things survive and some are transformed beyond all recognition. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad in this. It simply is a phenomenon that happens.
A better analogy would be what Disney did to the Brothers Grimm. In fact, Disney is probably the poster child for this shit, given how much they lobbied to extend copyright law so that nobody could do to them what they did to Europe's fairy tales.
No, the point was to provide an example of a cultural artefact being stripped of meaning and most people not being particularly affected by it in a negative way.
In fact, in the example, I would think most people are in agreement destroying the cultural artefact of absolute monarchy and wearing it’s hollow trappings as marketing props to boost the tourism industry is a good thing.
I genuinely don’t understand this obsession with “preserving the original meaning”. As if it actually exists, it does not, everything is a perversion of everything else. Even assuming there was some “original meaning”, why would hollowing it out, or twisting it into the very opposite matter in any way? It’s just another mutated idea in the long line of mutated ideas that make up human thought.
That’s indeed contrary and disrespectful of their original intent, but why does it matter what culture does it?
If people from a traditionally Buddhist country like Nepal disrespected Buddhist ideas, it would presumably be just as disrespectful as if people from America did, so I don’t think “cultural appropriation” is the right way to analyze this.
By the way, practically every religion has been transformed and warped so much over time as to be almost unrecognizable. This again is normal human behavior.
I'm not sure which is more disrespectful, but I do think the two situations are different. If I'm immersed in a culture or practice and I reject some aspects of it, from a place of familiarity, that means something different--maybe something more disrespectful!--that if I display the trappings of a culture without understanding what they mean.
> removed of their source context and used in a way that is contrary or even disrespectful of their original intent.
Ironically all this talk of cultural appropriation is "contrary or even disrespectful of the original intent" of Buddhism. Buddhism never belonged to Magadha, India or Asia, so it is not possible for anybody to appropriate it. It is not anyone's property to begin with
Each of those places has a very different culture.
Buddhism is not a monolithic entity. It took on vastly different forms in each of the places it landed. Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism have different scriptures, different approaches to bodhisattvas, different paths to awakening.
Was it disrespectful of the Chinese to take Buddhist teachings when they arrived and transform them to fit their cultural context? Should we go eliminate Buddhism from China because it's not native there and they twisted it to fit their culture?
Spot on. This is a perfect example of appropriation.
---
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from minority cultures.
According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context ─ sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture – the practice is often received negatively.
This definition is so broad you can basically classify anything you don’t like as “cultural appropriation” depending on how loosely you define “minority”, “majority” and “context”. And in fact that’s what usually ends up happening. Certain forms of blatant “cultural appropriation” are not criticized or even considered as such as long as they conform to the cultural zeitgeist of Western academia.
For example, famous BLM activist Blair Imani is convert to Islam. After her religious conversion she soon after came out as a proud queer woman and upon being questioned she claimed there is no conflict between homosexuality and Islam. She subsequently gave media tours proudly proclaiming to the world her marginal view of Islam. This idea obviously only exists in some marginal Muslim communities in the west and goes against the beliefs of 99% of Muslims in the global south. Is this not blatant cultural appropriation? She took Islam and warped it to fit her western morality much to the anger of its emotional adherents.
Obviously we will never see an article calling her or the Nation of Islam cultural appropriators.
"majority" and "minority" are not about raw numbers but power dynamics in this context.
"colonialism" refers to extracting whatever idea or artifact is seen as valuable from a culture or a land without consent and/or without respecting the moral rights of who invented or made it.
Additionally, you can read the wikipedia page.
(edited for clarity: different people use majority/minority differently depending on the context. In this context it's not about raw numbers.)
(edit: an example of power dynamic could be a large multinational food chain that takes a lesser-known dish from some culture and sells a butchered version worldwide without clearly indicating the origin and/or that it's not the real thing. By doing this it can easily distorts the idea of the dish in the minds of millions of people.)
> "majority" and "minority" are never about raw numbers but power dynamics.
Sure, I’m aware of this distinction. I’m asking what are the power dynamics between Asian Buddhists and random American businessmen hypocritically adopting Buddhism? They don’t even live in the same countries, and there is not any colonial relationship or other power relationship between them as far as I can tell, so what makes one “majority”?
Sure, in general, the West has exploited Asia many times throughout history; is this the only reason? If so, then wouldn’t any cultural exchange whatsoever between Asia and the West count as appropriation?
> "colonialism" refers to extracting
This is a really vague and ahistorical definition of colonialism that seems made up to justify your point, but anyway, nothing has been “extracted” — people in traditionally Buddhist cultures have the same access to the same Buddhism that they did before. Unlike actual historical colonialism in which physical resources are stolen, people are forced to work, traditional culture is banned or heavily distorted in the places where it’s practiced, and so on.
I’ve heard the power dynamics argument before and admittedly it’s never held much weight for me. There are just too many edge cases for a heuristic like that to make any sense, in my mind.
So culturally powerless people may extract from culturally powerful people until what point? If a Ukrainian appropriates a part of Russian culture to be their own, who is the victim here? Recently, being Ukrainian has become a much more respected cultural identity than being a Russian, does that mean the power dynamic has shifted?
The more you pick away at the idea of cultural appropriation, you realize that the rules people set out for it make very little sense outside of the egregious examples of something like headdresses at Coachella, etc. My personal rule is just not to disrespect people and parts of their culture they find important. The color of my skin or the actions of either of our ancestors shouldn’t play into it, IMO.
To me, disrespecting you is any behaviour which _I_ find disrespectful. If I was mistaken, I'd apologize. I can't control how you feel, burrows, I can only control what I say.
> My personal rule is just not to disrespect people and parts of their culture they find important
In the Simbari culture, it is considered important for young boys to be taken away from their families, be beaten and forced to fellate the older members of the tribe.
Does your personal rule of not disrespecting "people and parts of their culture" hold in their case?
In Hebrew culture, it is considered important to remove part of the genitals of an infant boy in a long and bloody ceremony. Personally I'd never subjugate myself or my kin to it, but I know plenty of Jewish people and have never tried to debate them about it.
If a Simbari person wanted to have an earnest discussion about whether the practice you're describing was acceptable, I'd of course tell them that I think it's barbaric and insane. But if you're asking whether I'd seek out Simbari people out to tell them I feel that way? No, I would not. So my heuristic holds true, but I do appreciate the gotcha :)
> I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism”
I think you jumped the gun. The extended interview with the book author showed that her position is aligned, or even the same as yours (your comment is naturally too brief to tell whether I should have used only “aligned” or “same”).
And indeed it’s Buddhism we’re talking about: a belief system appropriated by other cultures to the point where its origin in India was forgotten for centuries.
He did jumped the gun. The author Carolyn Chen made some very compelling arguments saying corporatized Buddhism is unrecognizable. Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.
"What we see in American religion, even if it is practiced in a corporate setting, is often the question, “How can the group help the individual realize themselves?” Whereas in other cultures this question tends to be reversed: “How can the individual help realize the goals of the group?” Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion."
> The author Carolyn Chen made some very compelling arguments saying corporatized Buddhism is unrecognizable.
I agree with that. I don’t see the problem though. Why is modifying an idea a bad thing?
> Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.
I agree with this too. I am also left asking, why is this considered bad? To clarify, I don’t refer to the ethics of working 70 hours per week, I refer to the emergence of this new religion. Why is the emergence of a new religion bad?
> I am also left asking, why is this considered bad?
Who is saying it's bad? I think you're arguing against a point nobody is making.
I find the most remarkable appropriation of Buddhism to have been the Tibetan, complete with the overthrow of the monarch through an alliance with the Qing and the institution of a theocratic-feudal state (Ganden Phodrang) more like revolutionary Iran than what it re-invented itself into in the 20th century. People seem fine with that; who can complain?
The language of appropiation implies a sort of 'property'-like dynamic for ideas.
If I learn, get to know, understand an idea from somebody else, I have not appropiated them in any way. I merely have adopted their idea.
This way of copying/adopting of other's ideas is what makes a cultural society thrive. On the other hand, a society where all idea transfers are in fact an exchange of something, is exactly what I consider the essence of a market.
The critical difference is that in a market, widgets are exchanged. And whenever somebody takes a widget from somebody else, only one widget remains.
However when somebody adopts another's idea, the idea is now it two places (and quite possibly, with a slight difference); that it, until "the idea" becomes a digital artifact, then it's the exact same "digital" copy which exists in more than the one original instance.
It's the dumbest action to try and enforce that digital artifacts (and later on, ideas themselves) behave like widgets in a market.
You have me thinking about the recent “Every Complex Idea Has a Million Stupid Cousins” submission.
In that metaphor, maybe appropriation is when people go around selling dumbed-down or distorted copies that ignore the complexity and fullness of the original ideas. The original ideas are still out there, but for the people who only see the stupid copies, the majesty of the original idea is masked/overshadowed.
And my understanding is that part of the complaint around appropriation involves outsiders profiting from their use/misuse while the originators of the culture see none of the spoils.
Cultural exchange of food and clothes and such is great. I’m a lot more sympathetic to the complaint here, though, which seems to be that people have taken the surface level of Buddhist religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the interviewee. I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities, and… yeah, that’d be pretty weird. (Or maybe a better analogy would be some kind of monastic liturgy, since she mentions meditation is uncommon in traditional practice.)
> which seems to be that people have taken the surface level of Buddhist religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the interviewee
I agree this is happening. Why is this an intrinsically bad thing? It seems to me to be just how cultural exchanges work. An idea comes, parts of it are kept, others removed, and others modified. Why is stripping an idea of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t think that exists) and changing it, even beyond recognition an intrinsically bad this?
> I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities
I’m going to assume the comment means “I imagine how I would feel experiencing a twisted version of christianity”. Under that assumption, the answer would be the same way a conservative christian feels when seeing a church displaying the gay flag. Just like you in the hypothetical scenario, they feel weird.
Are you as sympathetic to the conservative christian as you are to the traditional buddhist? After all, in both cases, “surface level of religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the person” seems to apply.
I am! That specific scenario is complicated, because churches that display a gay flag never do so to the exclusion of prayer and loving Jesus and all the normal parts of the religion, and quite a few of them will tell you that they're flying it precisely because they love Jesus. With groups like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I think conservative Christians have every right to be unhappy and I wish people wouldn't appropriate Christianity in that way.
I think this calls for a more nuanced distinction than I think your comment draws. Yes, cultural exchange and transformation is fundamentally how culture happens. Buddhism started from one guy in what we'd now call India, built on some ideas that were already in the area, and has shifted and changed as it moved across time and space. Buddhism isn't owned by any one people or place.
But that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as appropriation, or that it doesn't occur in Silicon Valley.
I've participated in multiple work-place meditation trainings. In each case, the teacher was American, spoke English as a first language, and had done teacher-trainings at American institutions, and I think they were always white. Would my company have been equally willing to hire a Thai immigrant who spoke English but not with an American accent, whose credentials were years of monastic training? Or, is there an institutional preference for hearing Buddhist practices from someone who, as Chen says, looks just like the people they are teaching?
If one population is able to profit off of communicating the cultural practices of others who are not able to access the same opportunities, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"? If not, what should it be called?
> If one population is able to profit off of communicating the cultural practices of others who are not able to access the same opportunities, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"?
No. Let me answer your second question first before formulating the answer.
> If not, what should it be called?
Getting lucky
—-
So, I don’t understand how “Buddhism isn't owned by any one people or place” can go together with “communicating the cultural practices of others”. Is buddhism “owned” by a people or not?
I am going to assume the answer is no. This transforms your statement into:
If one population is able to profit off of communicating an idea and another population is not able to access the same opportunity, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"
Certainly you can see now why no, it is not “appropriation”. Some people have an opportunity to do something, others do not. The conversation on access to opportunities is a separate topic.
Hence the answer to the second question. The first population got lucky.
Ad cultural appropriation - in the US, it seems that no matter what you do (in some eyes), at the same time, you ignore another culture and appropriate its traditions.
For me, there is a distinction:
- Adapting, mixing, etc. is (as you said) the bedrock of humanity. It is learning from other cultures.
- Claiming that one is doing "real Buddhism" (when it is a version far from any tradition) or serving pepperoni pizza as "genuinely Italian", or being a "true Christian" for having Xmas with a Coca-Cola Santa Claus.
The latter is essentially a Cargo Cult of some other traditions and cultures.
I asked a few Italians about "pizza as an international dish". One opinion was that there is nothing wrong with baking "bread with other ingredients". What pissed her off was when people said such a dish was similar to one food prepared by her mother or in her town.
> What pissed her off was when people said such a dish was similar to one food prepared by her mother or in her town.
Most people overestimate how old traditional recipes are, anyway. Italians didn’t have tomatoes or potatoes before Columbus; nor did Indians, Thais or Chinese people have chile peppers… is all global cuisine just a huge cultural appropriation from the Mexicans and Peruvians?
I suspect you might enjoy reading the rest of the article. It goes into some depth on what Buddhism was, is and how it has been adapted in the West to mostly focus on meditation and why. Rather than a critique of "Western Buddhism" it is an exploration of it in a wider context. The term appropriation might have been off-putting due to its current cultural load, but in this context it is not wrong.
For others that are curious about meditation and Buddhism, I would suggest reading the article and making up your own mind, rather than the comments here.
The appropriation tone becomes apparent in the middle of the article where the author explains that its not all of Buddhism and is neither wrong or right.
But then again I would not know how those of the religious tones of Buddhism might look upon my non-religious practice of the Buddhism teachings except that they might see it as neither wrong or right but hope for my future progress towards Nirvana
> In an industry where 70+ hour workweeks are normal,
Well, there's part of your problem right there. I have great scepticism about businesses getting involved with things like Buddhism. From what few anecdotes I've heard, it ends up being some kind of twisted take on the source religion.
Buddhism is not some kind of pill that you swallow to move from working 70+ hours per week to 80+ hours a week.
Ultimately, Buddhism is a withdrawal. You become nobody in particular. This is the opposite of the Cult of Personality, and Manifest Destiny, that seems to permeate the tech industries (I'm looking at you, Google, Microsoft, etc.).
Religion has some passages that can be cherry picked to mislead the masses and especially useful for the ruler class to direct them. Buddha is not an exception to it.
As I've always feel, most traditional religion teachings doesn't fit with modern way (globalization, capitalism) of living.
Sure and the corporation has so mangled Christianity that it is now most associated with massive mandatory shopping sprees every December.
So what? Corporatism fucks up and subverts everything it can get its hands on. Buddhism remains a powerful and compelling religious practice.
Like most religious practices most people dip their toes in or only take the parts they like the best. It’s not like most Catholics are running around washing the feet of the poor.
Not sure exactly what insight this story thinks it’s conveying.
This article basically says Buddhism has two key elements, the more important devotional worship that westerners are ignoring, and meditation, which is sort of a fringe practice.
That’s pretty confusing as I think most people would say the main concept of Buddhism is the teachings of the Buddha. This article appears silent on the concept of dukkha, enlightenment, the eightfold path, the four noble truths, and so on and so forth.
As such it is utterly and completely missing the point.
It's missing your point, but it seems to communicate its own point well.
> This article basically says Buddhism has two key elements, the more important devotional worship that westerners are ignoring, and meditation, which is sort of a fringe practice.
It's sad that in the US Buddhism stands for some kind of a woolly notion of peace and peacefulness. In the countries where it is in majority, it is as bad as any other institutionalized religion. Sri Lanka and Burma (now Myanmar), known for the worst kind of pogroms against minorities, have the dubious distinction of a lot of riots against minorities and many, if not most, of these are led by Buddhist monks in their holy saffron garb.
Re corporate America, meditation and mindfulness were waiting to be incorporated into the corporate 'feel good' mantra.
Ironically, it's expired and renew in every point in time. Even Arahants couldn't stand still in provocative environments. "Mindfulness" is weird english word that doesn't translate well into what it actually is. I would describe the state of mind like "nothingness of soul". At the end of the day, as I understand, Buddhism is about observing things from distance (even mind detached from everything, eventually until there is no mind/soul at all), like "it is what it is". Anger, love, stress whatever comes and go. Urhggg oh my .. buddhist, the more I describe the more it becomes inaccurate.
lmao, reminds me of when in response to a lot of people being overworked and unable to work, they decided to offer a free subscription to a mindfulness app.
I haven't had the time to read this article carefully (I will do so later), but it's very problematic to "gatekeep" religion or knowledge. If you're learning from eastern masters, if the original intent of the religion was to spread widely to any interested party, if you're being curious and respectful (you can even respectfully criticize, reject, or condemn any culture -- this is what enables rejecting and criticizing fascism even if not in your own nation; and this is what enables us to improve our society with cultural exchange). So on the surface the criticism here isn't valid at all.
Second, no person is obliged to adhere to a standard defined hundreds of years ago (or otherwise). Buddhism, and all cultures, are allowed to evolve according to our better understanding of science, the universe, ourselves, even philosophy, etc.. And also to fit well into people's lives and local culture. Most of the spirit of the Buddha is that of finding the truth and achieving enlightenment -- being too stuck to his every word is contrary to the spirit of his teachings. Secularity (I am a secular Buddhist) wasn't even too well defined in the time of Buddha I think.
If you don't want to learn anything about Buddhism, only the basics of meditation, no one should stop you. I think most teachings are very beautiful and well worthy of study, but that's ultimately up to yourself.
If you want to learn more, I thoroughly recommend masters like Thich Nhat Hanh and reading (perhaps commentated) Buddha's original thoughts (I believe Dhammapada summarizes many of them).
Quite right, and you’ll find that Chen (the author and interviewee) is not really pointing to the aspect of adaptation as being problematic, more so the ends to which Buddhist practice is being repurposed.
A few relevant excerpts:
> The Dalai Lama was instrumental in advancing the secularization of meditation. For him it was in part a political calculation. He wanted to make Buddhism relevant and useful to the West.
> I think all the teachers had some qualms about being forced to leave the ethical aspects of Buddhism out of the workplace. They were not being hired to make the employees more ethical; they were being hired to make them more productive.
> Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion.
> But there are downsides to this. We start to organize our selves, communities, and spiritualities around capitalism’s goals of efficiency and productivity, ignoring other possible ethics of justice, kinship, and beauty. Ultimately, companies, which are driven by the bottom line, cannot offer us a “solution” for a flourishing life.
When I think of the startup I left, and which took so much of my life, it’s easy to characterize it as a quasi cult.
> In a place like the United States, there is a racial dimension to what is considered “universal.”
The Buddha of the Pali Canon explicitly and unambiguously rejected racial classifications; the Dharma is for all sentient beings, full stop. Vasettha Sutta (Sn. 3.9); Kannakatthala Sutta (MN 90); Assalayana Sutta (MN 93). From these and from suttas like the Tama Sutta (AN 4:85) and "An Outcaste" (Sn 1.7), the message is clear: one's birth (or social status) can neither exonerate immoral acts nor negate virtuous conduct. I find it notable that Chen pauses to point out how Western individualism contradicts the "Buddhist principle of no-self" but apparently never pauses to think whether she is herself reifying the concept of race beyond what the Buddha-word can support (race is closely related to concepts of self and identity, if you believe Intersectionality.)
Possibly the reason "white Buddhism" is an "unregulated market" is that in America we have the freedom to worship as we choose without the intervention of busybodies checking our skin color.
edit: I follow Theravada and recognize that most of the converts to Buddhism she is criticizing, follow an Americanized form of Mahayana.
> Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics.
I don't think that's true; or at least, it depends on what you mean by "mindfulness". That claim is made in the context of vipassana, which can be an advanced practice. But mindfulness as such is one of the spokes of the Wheel of Dharma; it's simply paying attention, and it's a necessary pre-requisite to doing anything right. You can't maintain any kind of morality, for example, if you don't really know what's going on around you.
>Traditionally a monastic practice, meditation was even then considered a specialty of only certain monks. Furthermore, it is only since the 20th century that meditation has been considered a practice appropriate to teach to laypeople.
I agree that meditation was mainly a practice mainly reserved for suitable monks.
But I didn't speak of meditation; I was speaking of mindfulness. Everyone that hopes to follow a Buddhist path needs to practice mindfulness. The idea that mindfulness is a meditation practice is pretty-much western, and modern.
"Mindfulness" could simply be not drifting off; it could be a practice you do while walking, or programming, or whatever; or it could be a rather intense investigation of your whole experience, with the goal of exposing what you think your selfhood consists of. I think the latter is usually referred to as "vipassana". In the West, vipassana is taught to newbies and non-Buddhists, as a relaxation technique. But it can be strong medicine.
I'm pretty sure you're right that it's only recently, and in the West, that meditation has been widely taught to laypeople. But, for example, Shaivite and Buddhist lay yogins have been practising meditation for centuries. Not very many of them, sure; but these yoga practices are not monkish specialties at all.
That Tricycle article is, I'm afraid, full of speculation. And in the early paragraphs, the article notes that solitary meditators sitting under trees were scorned by the monks; they didn't follow the vinaya. So if we're allowed to speculate, I'd speculate that most meditators were not monks, at least in the mediaeval period.
The stories about Shariputra and Ananda are instructive, but they're 2,500 years old, and were not written down contemporaneously. An outstanding example of a monk-meditator is Shantideva, who lived in the 8thC, and was a monk at Nalanda University. His work is remarkable on its own merits, but he's also remarkable for being a monk; most of the famous meditation teachers were lay people. And Shantideva was criticised, because as a monk he was practicing tantra. Tantra calls for behaviour that is not permitted for monks.
Anyone who has read the Dhammapada can tell you exactly why the rise of Buddhism is a good thing. America's tendency to wrap everything up in a fancy package and slap a dollar sign on it might be annoying, but meditation is free - Ignore the noise.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) has been doing this for a while now[1]. But it's not a big deal because outrage bait articles didn't make it a big deal. Please argue about gun control or roe, or some other hot button issue. Leave the Buddha's teachings out of it.
I recall a former cult member turned therapist and cult expert Steve Hassan mentioning TM as problematic, he is the first reviewer quoted by this book about the topic
Any website/domain created for the sole purpose of smearing another peaceful individual gets an instant Ctrl+W from me. TM is a bit outrageous with their pricing model, but it's just mantra meditation with a paid instructor. No, I don't work for TM and I've never paid for a TM class. I just know TM has done a lot of good for the world despite their flaws. But everyone has flaws. I'd rather focus on the positive.
Reading the comments, one argument I keep seeing in different form is essentially “corporations/the west are hollowing out/perverting/distorting/using only some parts of buddhist teachings, and this is bad”.
Why? Why is modifying an idea, even by twisting it to be the very opposite of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t believe that exists, everything is a modified version of something else) an intrinsically bad thing?
If it’s not, what’s the problem with corporations twisting buddhism to suit their needs?
I came here to say something similar: Do the rules of religion prohibit molding any religion to serve any purpose? What rules? Your religion can be anything you want it to be. Moreover, nobody can interpret the doctrines or traditions of your religion for you, unless they actually believe in precisely the same religion.
> Do the rules of religion prohibit molding any religion to serve any purpose? What rules?
Quite obviously yes. The purpose of Christianity is to serve God or something like that. You cannot change it to serve God and Elon Musk as you cannot have other gods.
>Your religion can be anything you want it to be.
Well yes but it will be your own personal religion, not a religion that is shared by anybody.
Agreed, to be a "religion" it should have more than one follower. I don't think they have to all believe exactly the same things, as there are variations and divisions of belief even within mainstream religions. But there should at least be some commonality of belief, or a shared administrative structure.
The idea that Christians should serve God and the poor was popular in my day.
But a religion could be molded gradually by a series of tiny steps, especially if given time to develop apologetic explanations to cover for what seem like contradictions. I remember reading that a prominent Christian leader proclaimed Donald Trump to be sent by God to rule us, and his idea gained some popularity. I prefer to let the religious sort out for themselves what's consistent with their doctrines.
It is not intrinsically bad to modify an idea, it is bad to take an idea that is meant to improve people lives, then twist it so that instead its concepts are used so that corporations can make more money, while pretending it still improves the people lives.
Every idea can be interpreted in this light. In fact, a modified version of this argument is often used by conservatives opposing women in the workforce.
“Well sure, womens rights might be good, but you see, the feminists twisted a good message and now they use it to push women away from motherhood and into corporations so the corporations make more profit and sell them more things”
Is it also bad when feminists encourage womens participation in the workforce?
> Chen: For the overwhelming majority of Asian Buddhists, Buddhism is a devotional practice. Bowing to images of deities, burning incense, worshiping at an altar — those are all fundamental elements of Buddhist practice. There is this acknowledgement of worshiping higher beings. Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Buddhist practice. Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics. But Jack Kornfield, who is one of a number of influential teachers responsible for making Buddhist meditation go mainstream, understood that devotional Buddhism would be an obstacle for white Americans. He emphasized meditation because he understood that devotional Buddhism would be too associated with “religious” practice.
This paragraph is so so wrong. Where do I even start?
She says that others are appropriating Buddhism, and she goes on to do just that.
Yuck.
And no, meditation wasn’t reserved for the monastic elites. Did she even study Buddhism at all?
Buddha said in his address to Ananda, that thousands of his disciples who are in households, and not monks, have attained Nirvana. Not only did they meditate, they attained Nirvana- the highest goal.
This person is saying all sorts of wrong things.
If you go by Gautama Buddha's teachings only, you will know that none of the common practices nowadays are kind of forbidden by Buddha. The bowing down, the incense sticks- these are later additions, and never encouraged by the Buddha.
You seem to take the author's language here as describing early Buddhism, but I think she is describing the observed history of Asian Buddhism, presumably East and Southeast Asian Buddhism. I think this is a clearer reading given that she starts with "Asian Buddhists," focuses on the Burmese tradition, mentions again "for most of its history in Asia," mentions Jack Kornfield who studied in the Thai tradition, etc.
For the language at the end of your comment, this kind of sola scriptura [1] approach is valuable and worthwhile, and it is part of how lay meditation traditions were revived in Asian Buddhism [2] -- but when you describe Asian Buddhist traditions as "later additions ... never encouraged by the Buddha," isn't this what the author has in mind with her next paragraph? Copied for your convenience:
> I want to clarify, by the way, that I’m not necessarily critical of American Buddhist entrepreneurs. The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
It's fair is she mentions that she is describing Buddhism as per current SE-Asian practices.
Then it is fair.
> The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
But she wants to make the readers believe that her version of Buddhism is the "right" way to do it? And she is rebuking the white Buddhists for deviating from it?
If you read the “Inquiry of Ugra”, you’ll see that the ideal layperson is nothing like the average American Buddhist. The layperson is supposed to live like a monk and hope to be reborn as a proper monastic.
I think it's folly to try to essentialize "the Buddha", when it's likely that Siddhartha Gautama never even existed.
My point in bringing up Ugra was to show that many/most sects of Buddhism have been predominantly focused on monasticism. In the sutras, advanced lay people are the exception, not the rule. And the surrounding societies understand that there's a difference. But in the west, lay people have higher expectations for spiritual attainment...
Read Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught". You will know how far deviated incense burning and bowing to pictures are from Buddha's teaching.
Buddhism is a very rational philosophy. If you study Buddhism in the light of it being a protest against established thiestic, ritualistic religion in India, these will start making much more sense.
As far as McMeditation is from Buddhism, the same is true for regular people worshipping Buddha like a god.
Religion might have democratic elements, but truth isn't democratic.
The book you are referring to means nothing because it is a recent interpretation exactly as the author of the article is describing. From The Making of Buddhist Modernism:
>1. Rahula selects from the vast corpus of Buddhist literature certain features that can be interpreted in such a way as to resonate with a modern worldview, especially the Enlightenment, Protestantism, Transcendentalism, and science.
>2. This selection excludes or obscures other features of Buddhist literature, for example the many stories of miracles, magical feats, supernatural beings, and literal heavens and hells.
>3. When Rahula does address these, he tends to present them as ethically significant myth, symbol, or allegory.
>4. By focusing on elite literature, Rahula’s presentation occludes many features of the tradition on the ground, such as ritual, devotion, and exorcism, that are actually more central to many Buddhists’ lives than abstract doctrines.
>Many ordinary Buddhists would not recognize much of what Rahula presents as their practices, attitudes, and beliefs. What he suppresses would give a fuller picture of Buddhism in its various historical manifestations. His emphasis on tolerance of other views, for example, is certainly not reflected in the many Buddhist polemical texts savaging opponents’ positions, or the religious conflicts in his own Sri Lanka that Buddhists themselves have participated in. What he refers to as “the Buddhist” is an idealized figure having little to do with living Buddhists. For example, in contrast to the pervasive practices among Buddhists for accruing merit in order to gain a higher rebirth, Rahula claims, on the basis of the doctrines of ana tman and impermanence, that “the Buddhist” is “never worried about” the problem of life after death. Rahula’s Buddhism is the idealized, textualized Buddhism of the orientalist scholars.
My tbought are limited to Buddha's teachings only.
SEAns can live their life as they see fit, they just shouldn’t demand that everyone conform to their version.
> occludes many features of the tradition on the ground, such as ritual, devotion, and exorcism, that are actually more central to many Buddhists’ lives than abstract doctrines.
Same goes here. Just because hundreds of thousands of people are practising Buddhism in one way, that doesn't become the only way or the actual way.
They shouldn’t want conformation from white western buddhists. That's what this Chen person is demanding.
If white western buddhists want to draw from Dhammapada and Buddha's teachings only, and want to completely ignore what SEAns do on the ground, then that's fine.
Again, please stop treating what actual Buddhism is in the lense of anthropology.
Treat it as a Philosophy like it was originally intended by the Buddha and fellows like Ashvaghosa, Buddhaghosa, Nagarjuna, etc.
Please do not let the SEAns determine what actual Buddhism is.
I have seen and studied Buddhism in the context of Indian philosophy, and it matches the white buddhist version (like Robert Wright) far more than the worshipping, thiestic SEAns.
Please study some Buddhism. And read debates of Nagarjuna (you need some level of rigor, experience in STEM/logic, to get them).
When you read the logics of Buddhists versus Nyaya and Nyaya-Vaisheshika, you will start to get how right western buddhists are.
Theistic, worshipping, candle-lighting Buddhists of SEA are nothing like what these guys were.
What SEAns practice as Buddhism is no more actual Buddhism than the white western Mindfulness guys.
Chen is talking about Buddhism the religion, which millions of people have practiced and are still practicing. You wrote that Chen was wrong saying meditation was/is not a mainstream lay practice. It is not wrong.
While you might be able to construct a philosophy from the Buddha's teachings, Buddhism is not it. The Buddha never created Buddhism; he never said these are my teachings and this is Buddhism. Buddhism was established by the people who listened to him. It also contains aspects such as the vinaya and rebirth, which make it not a philosophy but a religion (or are rules on robes philosophical ideas?). Therefore it is entirely appropriate to look at it from an anthropological lens. And from that lens, it is not inaccurate to claim that lay people did not generally practice meditation, and there has been reform, by people who likely had to invent their meditation practice as it did not come by lineage.
Surely you won't claim that Jack Kornfield himself read the scriptures or whatever and got closer to the Buddhism as Buddha intended it! And he left stuff out to make it palatable in the West, unless he teaches about the realm of hungry ghosts? That makes what Chen wrote entirely accurate both in the paragraph you quoted and in a wider sense as well.
I’m a Catholic (so I have … my own view on Buddhism) but I lived in SEA for a long time.
I want to say, this article is very good.
The buddhism as practiced in the west has very little to do with actual practices in the east. But, Buddhism is also very confusing, and it’s hard to say “what is the true buddhism” (mahayana, therevada, vajrayana and zen buddhism in Japan (formally mahayana) are all very different)
To be fair, Catholicism has seen many branches over the year and only skirts by this "it's confusing" stuff by claiming it's the OG Christian sect, despite having massive shifts in policy over the years.
Theravada Buddhism is the oldest extant version of the religion. I find it to be rather straight forward and specific with the goals of the teachings. It is all summarized in the Four Noble Truths. It lists the fundamental issue of suffering and how to resolve it. Much of the confusion is in religious terminology which obscures the fundamental ideas. The basis for the religion is based on ancient ideas such as cycles of rebirth, heavenly realms, extrasensory perception, etc., but for me personally none of that is required to derive value from it.
When you read the Mahayana (later versions) it stops making sense at a fundamental level, because the ancient Mahayana were pessimistic and did not believe you could actually resolve the issue of suffering in human timespans. It inherits the early texts, but downplays them with newer texts, themes, and ideas. It adds a worship element (Bodhisattvas). After several interpretations and cultural adaptations it becomes less comprehensible and more performative. Zen is an example, it operates on the principle that you cannot understand the content logically, so you need to perform the rituals (mediation, chanting, etc.) to get to the ground unadulterated truth. It is non-rational, partially because it integrates Taoism which cannot be grasped conceptually. This is mainly what makes Buddhism so confusing.
The same thing has occurred with Christianity. Started as a Jewish sect of Judaism, Gentiles introduced newer ideas, becomes Catholic Church, series of church schisms (Council of Nicea, East West Split), hundreds of years of commentaries, Martin Luther triggers Protestant Reformation, the Church adapts to new ideas and becomes less and less comprehensible. Pentecostalism is a example of how far this can go (speaking in tongues, faith healing, ordinances, snake handling, etc.).
". But, Buddhism is also very confusing, and it’s hard to say “what is the true buddhism” (mahayana, therevada, vajrayana and zen buddhism in Japan (formally mahayana) are all very different)"
That seems to to be the case with most major religions. It always boggles my mind how different the conclusions of different Christian groups from the reading the same Bible are. Same for Islam.
Focussing on all these different ways also occludes the general idea that there is a thing such as enlightment and a way to see all beings interconnected. You can have the same experience as a Catholic if you move beyond words (remember Jesus primary teaching (love God completely and love your neighbor like yourself)
Many things we notice in our minds are just labels and people are crazy easy to get hung up on them as being the thing in themselves.
Fun fact: Buddhist monks, after having given up everything, still fought over "right view". Even during the lifetime of the Buddha. Even though there were many arahants around. The urge to be right, and the antagonism toward those that we perceive as wrong, runs very very deep.
I appreciate that in the Pali Cannon recorded all of these internal disagreements and mistakes as the Buddhist communities grew, as well as challenges and debates with other communities.
Far more people are tired of Westerners blacking up, dressing up in a parody of the people that they colonized and doing a little dance that seems like something a native would do, which is why it's a discussion now.
I agree, that is rather stupid. There is a point in the concept of appropriation if a group actually is negatively affected, but there should be no IP on ideas on how to live a good life.
I agree. The word "appropriation" heavily connotes an interpretation as theft, and therefore bad. But cultures never exist in a vacuum, there's always cross-pollination, inspiration and adaption of ideas. I see this as a good, rather than bad, thing. Some people make out that their cultural artefacts are theirs, and theirs alone.
But I still see that there is a problem with Buddhism being used in corporate America. It smacks too much of a kind of "spiritual materialism" for want of better words, which is precisely the kind of thing that won't work.
Rather than say "appropriation", I'd say that Buddhism has been "misappropriated" would be an apt description in this instance. I reiterate that words like "appropriation" and "misappropriation" must be used only in rare cases.
Buddhism does have a place in the West, but I'd prefer people to seek guidance from genuine monks rather than laymen who style themselves as "trainers".
There is a zen buddhist saying "Be careful not to stink of zen". And it can apply both to Buddhism as practised in the west and the east. Its a slightly... provoking saying though, as it may offend other Buddhist practitioners.
Zen Buddhism (from Japan/China) can of course vary greatly from Theravada Buddhism (found in South and South-East Asia). However I would say, that there seems to me much more variety of Buddhist schools in zen Buddhism (Japan) and what they believe and practice than in Buddhism as practised in Thailand, Cambodia etc.
Buddhism is quite fluid even in Asia - but I do think that its right that the Buddhism that is in the west (mostly influenced from Japan zen schools - e.g. soto) came from a more idealised version than is practiced often in the east.
There was an article in the BBC a while back (can try and find if people want) that noted that Buddhism as practised in the west had issues as it promoted a 'cold selfish' side of Buddhism (it pointed to some studies of people that meditate feeling less guilty if they commited a crime). This differed from how its mostly used in Asia where compassion/karmic practice/social works and community are more encouraged.
Personally I wouldn't trust any Buddhist practice organized by a company - the stink of zen would likely be pretty unbearable
Part of the problem is that Buddhist institutions in the west are organized like non-profits or social clubs. They have hierarchies of lay people and boards of directors. They have to appeal to rich people for fundraising, and they become embedded in a sort of upperclass culture.
They don’t “stink of zen”; they stink of capitalism.
> [Zen at War] meticulously documents Zen Buddhism's support of Japanese militarism from the time of the Meiji Restoration through the World War II and the post-War period. It describes the influence of state policy on Buddhism in Japan, and particularly the influence of Zen on the military of the Empire of Japan. A famous quote is from Harada Daiun Sogaku: "[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way]."
> The book also explores the actions of Japanese Buddhists who opposed the growth of militarism.
The mass exodus from MS Outlook and desktop email clients to webmail with cloud-based virus scanning has removed the greatest source of suffering in the corporate world: Attachments.
I am not an expert on Buddhism, but I grew up in India and noticed similarities with Hinduism in two countries: Bhutan and Thailand. The Buddhist temples were very ornate and seemed to be focused on the devotional aspects. If you apply what Chen is saying to Hinduism, it strikes true to me: meditation and yoga are very recent trends in India, and most people focus on the ritualistic and devotional aspects.
Corporations are pushing Buddhist mindfulness to calm employees down, get them to pay attention to their job and thus increase productivity and their bottom line. It's a win win!
>"turn workplaces into productivity-centered 'faith communities.'"
Huh?
>"Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism"
Appropriation feels like a strong word. Are we not supposed to try new ideas from outside the tech industry? Ever? Chen's thesis in this article feels like a dramatic take.
You can try whatever you like, I think the angle is more about how meditation of various kinds are being adopted while other pieces of their source may be neglected, and this is in service to corporations and capitalism. I don't think it's inherently bad, but the insinuation is it's putting more of the spiritual/community stuff that we got from religion into our work, by moving stuff like mindfulness and conscious 'loving-kindness' into the corporate setting. Centralizing your needs into the hands of big corp :)
I don't feel like I can speak to the usage of appropriation or other wokespeak though.
I think one extremely problematic part of this trend is that civic participation necessarily suffers when one’s life is in such close orbit around the workplace.
If one scarcely has the time to be informed about the state of the world, then forget being engaged or even organizing others.
For Hindus, Buddha was just one of the 10 avatars of Vishnu and he came for a time and purpose. It was never meant to be a separate religion but just took Hindu teachings on meditation and enlightenment and got adapted into another "ism". All the core teachings lie in Hindu scriptures, including Yoga, Meditation etc.
For Hindus, claiming everything in the subcontinent as their own seems like a favorite passtime. Jainism, Buddhism are not part of Hinduism and never were.
I think most people would agree that Buddhist doctrines first originated within a Hinduism-informed general milieu, and they can only be understood comprehensively in this light. Whereas Jainism seems to have developed in parallel with Vedic religion, and to have shared some of the same underlying concepts. Whether this means either are "part" of Hinduism probably depends on whom you ask.
What does "scripture" mean in this context? Scripture normally means messages 'directly' from the 'Abrahamic God' received by certain 'special individuals' (prophets, etc), such as the Bible, Quran, Torah. I thought Hinduism did not have any belief in any messages being sent from "God" to humans. So could you give some examples on what would be Hindu scripture and other examples of what would NOT be Hindu scripture?
And Hindu scriptures is the example the lexicographers chose. Besides, the Old and New Testaments are traditionally attributed to specific authors. Only the Quran qualifies as scripture by your definition, not even the Hadith.
> I thought Hinduism did not have any belief in any messages being sent from "God" to humans.
The Vedas are considered revelation from the ultimate reality. There are other scriptures considered apauruseya i.e. of non-human origin.
> The Vedas are considered revelation from the ultimate reality.
As far as I can tell from googling, they are just considered to be stories from Aryans that entered India. "The Vedas are considered the earliest literary record of Indo-Aryan civilization"
> As far as I can tell from googling, they are just considered to be stories from Aryans that entered India. "The Vedas are considered the earliest literary record of Indo-Aryan civilization"
"Tradition has it that humans did not compose the revered compositions of the Vedas, but that God taught the Vedic hymns to the sages, who then handed them down through generations by word of mouth. Another tradition suggests that the hymns were "revealed," to the sages, who were known as the seers or “mantradrasta” of the hymns."
According to Shahrastani some Muslims had pretty positive views of Vedas. Moreover Dara Shikoh famously considered Upanishads the “guarded tablet” mentioned in Quran 85:22
Of course it would. Buddhism teaches karma, the law of strict retribution from which there is no escape. And because there is no loving creator God in Buddhism, there's no one you can appeal to for mercy, grace, or forgiveness. A perfect fit.
It is a stretch to say that Practicing meditation and Buddhist philosophy ( just like any other company culture) is bringing religion to the corporation.
True - frankly, I can find my God or my gods elsewhere (unless it is a religious organization!). It's the same as treating your job like a job and not a social club.
False. Even with a cursory understanding of buddhist tradition you should know that the many schools accept the existence of god-like beings, but differ on their influence of the buddhist practitioner.
> LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner calls his leadership style “compassionate management,” which he describes as “putting yourself in another person’s shoes and seeing the world through their lens or perspective,” and claims it is inspired by teachings of the Dalai Lama.
It’s good corporate marketing but only skin thin: He’d still fire your ass in a millisecond if he needs to or wants to, regardless of your personal predicament.
Amazing. Weiner discovered the Golden Rule thought it was his own creation, repackaged it in corporatespeak.
"Compassionate management" should be the norm, and I'm suspicious of anyone who considers their own brand of management to be special for adhering to such a principle
I understand that Weiner has probably dealt with a lot of uncompassionate managers, but that should be treated as the exception to the definition of management and not the rule.
There is a practice called “warm capitalism” or some term like that and the essence is that you not go for the lowest bidder, but for the one having the best values (say most environmentally friendly) which in turn creates interest in being more environmentally friendly. But it could also be other values like social equality and so on.
For sure, that's what managers do; sometimes for good reason, but often it's just a numbers game.
I've seen this a few times; companies live by their values, until it comes down to money, then it's "just business". It's the public marketing face, and plenty of people are happy to live under its delusion, only to be confronted with the hard truth when it's time for reorganizations.
How would these people react if they learned that the Buddha said his teachings were to last only 1000 years* if women were not included in the Sangha? And will only last 500 years after women were included?:
> “But, Ānanda, if women had not obtained the Going-forth from the home life into homelessness in the Dhamma & Vinaya made known by the Tathāgata, the holy life would have lasted long, the true Dhamma would have lasted 1,000 years. But now that they have obtained the Going-forth from the home life into homelessness in the Dhamma & Vinaya made known by the Tathāgata, the holy life will not last long, the true Dhamma will last only 500 years.
Curiously, this sutta is left out of accesstoinsight.org, which is the leading source on the Internet for deriving the Buddha's authentic words (translated to English). What's your agenda, Bhikku Ṭhānissaro? Certainly not truth if your way is the way of omission.
*Then, what is it that is being practiced today that is called Buddhism? Or are Buddhists unaware of the mentioned sutta of the Buddha... or do they reject it?
But regarding this, and other, anti-women references in the Pali canon, the passages could be corruptions that don't reflect what the Buddha actually said.
Or they could be authentic statements the Buddha made due to genuine beliefs and/or wanting better cultural acceptance to help the survival of early Buddhism. In either case it's not a disaster for Buddhism, which emphasizes the need for individual wisdom & compassion, rather than blindly following some real or imagined leaders.
This issue at hand here is not limited to the question of women in the sangha, but of the Teacher's claims as to the potency and longevity of his Teachings.
I'm not sure if pointing out there are contradictions in the suttas helps the case.
In any case, whether through having contradictions or through rejection via cherry picking, modern Buddhists are eating the fruits of a poisoned tree.
The suttas were already cherry picked when they were written down. In fact, they were cherry picked when the oral tradition first developed.
See also, Digha Nikaya 16, the Mahā Parinibbāna Sutta, one of the foremost suttas detailing the Buddha's awakening, in which he refuses to achieve full enlightenment in the presence of Mara unless his monks and nuns, male and female lay followers were fully established in the dhamma.
If modern "Buddhists" are skillful their practice won't be poisoned by a couple of problematic/corrupt passages within the huge Pali cannon..
There's the now-famous Kalama Sutta where the Buddha specifically encourages people to not rely too much on canonical texts: https://suttacentral.net/an3.65/en/sujato
The 道德经 was not written in the last century, and the ancient pronunciation is only approximately known. Yes it's written in Modern Standard Chinese/pinyin as "Dào Dé Jīng" but the text has existence in the western world older than the Modern Standard Chinese language, certainly longer than modern Chinese orthography.
Looking at Zhengzhang reconstruction of the title, for instance, we get the pronuciation /l'uːʔ tɯːɡ keːŋ/ (I don't know old Chinese phonology at all, I'm just working from wiktionary - please forgive any errors/take with a grain of salt). I don't see any particular reason for English-speakers to use the Modern Standard Chinese pinyin orthography/pronunciation to write terms that come from a considerably older way of speaking. (I say this as someone learning Classical + Middle Chinese using Middle-Chinese pronunciation).
Okay one possible reason is that it might be seen as good if the main inheritors of the tradition (the modern Chinese state+people) get given 'ownership' of it, and that outsiders speak using their preferred terminology/pronunciation. But I'm not personally on board with that, any more than I'd insist that people pronounce Shakespeare in American English.
[ I apologise for any snark that might be residual in this reply (and acknowledge that the remark is slightly tangential to the topic of this page) - I've tried to keep it constructive. ]
As someone who has spend long time meditating in Buddhist monasteries, I would say they don't care.
Sutras are just teachings. You may learn from them and value them, but Buddhists are not "people of the book" like Abrahamic religions are. You don't have to parse everything Buddha and ponder it endlessly. Sometimes he just wondered about the future of the discipline.
He also changed his mind when others presented arguments, just like in this case.
Buddhism as a religion is considered just a vehicle for some truth that people can discover, not the goal itself. Requiring perfect gym to practice is not for people who really want to train.
My own personal experience differed from yours. In a retreat in Burma I observed a lot of traditions, which made it very clear that men had a higher standing than women. When forming a line for going to lunch, the monks were first, then the laymen, then the nuns and then the laywomen; only the monks ate on a raised platform, but not the nuns or laypeople etc.
This was not just old books, which nobody cared about, but pervasive everyday practice.
I very much believe that you had different experience and am happy for it. There’s a lot of Buddhists and different traditions and it’s very difficult to generalise. I myself also practiced in - more western - communities, where there was no noticeable gender imbalance. But I am also sure, that there are Buddhist traditions and communities, which are sexist.
1) You did not see nuns. Formal lineage of nuns died in Theravada lineage hundreds of years ago. Women were wearing white robes right? Those are the robes of novices. You need 5? female nuns to ordain a new nun. Sri Lankan monk, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (aka Bhante G) asked Tibetan nuns so bootstrap the tradition in Theravada, but it's just starting and there is resistance.
2) Women are considered less than men in Asian cultures (equality of sexes is new in the West too). Religions are not separate from the culture around them.
>But I am also sure, that there are Buddhist traditions and communities, which are sexist.
Yes there are and that is to be expected. (Unless you believe that Buddhism makes people somehow perfect. "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path" by Jack Kornfield is a good book that explains how full of shit Buddhists are no matter how much they train.
Buddhism is not about creating perfect world in this world or in afterlife.
Yes, thank you for this explanation. I didn’t know that they were not fully ordained, I learned something from you today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thilashin (although one could argue whether to call them nuns or not in English. The wikipedia article still calls them “Burmese Theravada Buddhist nun” and they were called nuns in English where I practiced - I’d say their culture’s concept of “nun” does not map perfect to the Western concept, so details get lost in translation, but your explanation is fundamentally correct and very helpful. )
This definitely makes clear again my lack of deeper understanding of their culture and the hubris of me judging their culture after having been in Burma for only a month.
That being said, there definitely were signs of sexism, women did not have the same standing and we should not close our eyes to this part of Buddhism. I don’t mean “and therefore Buddhism is bad”, but “as a Buddhist I think we can and should strive to do better”.
When Buddhism supports and reinforces misogyny, racism or jingoism from the surrounding culture, this is also a failing of Buddhism.
There are many Buddhist teachers (including Jack Kornfield) who absolutely do emphasise more virtuous and emphatic living as a core teaching and result of Buddhist practice. As a simple example, metta meditation is often advertised as actually helping you be more compassionate in “real life”.
> When Buddhism supports and reinforces misogyny, racism or jingoism from the surrounding culture, this is also a failing of Buddhism.
Buddhism as a religion has constantly and reliably failed throughout history. "This is not true Buddhism" is putting head into the sand. Buddhism that is deeply embedded into culture and tradition carries the baggage of the culture. Often when it transfers to a new culture there is a nice break from the tradition.
>There are many Buddhist teachers (including Jack Kornfield) who absolutely do emphasise more virtuous and emphatic
Yes. The wisdom of Jack Kornfield is taking western secular values adopting them into Buddhism and getting rid of the bad. Buddhism like any religion can be changed to anything you like, good or bad.
> Women are considered less than men in Asian cultures (equality of sexes is new in the West too). Religions are not separate from the culture around them.
Sure - but aren't monks and priests also supposed to be a model, demonstrating what a really dedicated, pious follower of the religion should look like?
Buddhism is not some progressive movement to change the world.
Ethnic Buddhist traditions are usually among the most conservative forces in the society. They try to be conservative models. In Burma and Sri Lanka many of the politically most active monks favor ethnic cleansing and preach religious intolerance.
There is sexism in Buddhism. I stayed at a Buddhist temple in Germany and there where way more rules for the nuns than the monks.
> "It is extremely important to note that world religions [...] are, naturally and inevitably, in large part compendia of rules for
managing daily life." - John A. Hall, Ideas and the Social Sciences, 1993
This is why I think it's a good thing that western Buddhism exits. It gets rid of all the bad stuff. And there are really interesting insights in Buddhism, like the concept of non-self or the four noble truths.
That’s laughable. Who decided what “the bad stuff” was? The early adopters were people who rejected western religions but projected western, individualistic culture onto eastern traditions.
Buddhists are not "people of the book" because the Buddha was not a God, and didn't have prophetic access to the teachings of a God. His views on karma and rebirth, for example, were those of the society he sprang from; they were not the result of transcendent insight. He was not some kind of perfect being.
Buddha became more God-like as the centuries passed; some Prajnaparamita and later texts describe him as being the height of seven palm trees, for example. But he's never been considered infallible, like a prophet.
> they were not the result of transcendent insight
That's exactly his selling point, that through deep meditation he had profound insights, regarding impermanance and no-self. But yeah, that was his own realisation, not just some words some god said to him that are supposed to be infallible.
Shahrastani, whose book Kitab al milal wan nihal is sitting in front of me right now, had a lot of things to report about Buddhists, and not only that verdict. Have you read him? Furthermore, Biruni on this subject alone is notoriously unreliable, relying on secondhand sources.
For that matter, the New Testament wasn't written until long after the life of Jesus, the canon wasn't established until long after many oral traditions were, and some of Old Testament canon the status of "deuterocanon/apocrypha" has been controversial.
Religions start with key important figures, events and practices long before they get encoded as text. The only one I can think of off the top of my head that might have gone somewhat in the reverse direction was L. Ron Hubbard writing Dianetics and other books to develop a schema and theory for psychological healing before he officially started Scientology. But I don't know all the details about early Scientology so it's hard to say precisely how much was pre-encoded there. I've heard rumours that Hubbard was involved in Freemasonry before starting Scientology so if it's true, it's likely that some of his experiences in it shaped his writings. I also heard that Paul Twitchell, founder of a lesser-known group called "Eckankar" spent some of his earlier days in Scientology. But I digress.
When you strip practices away from dogma in an attempt to further enrich corporations, it's almost like trying to start over with the practices borrowed from some past heritage, the corporation's leadership as the key figures who give advice or select practice consultants to confer with, and with some milestone of success as the promised "awakening event". It definitely runs the risk of turning the corporation into a personality cult where your boss directly or indirectly tells you how to reach a spiritual objective... Of making them money.
>Then, what is it that is being practiced today that is called Buddhism? Or are Buddhists unaware of the mentioned sutta of the Buddha... or do they reject it?
Well, there are many things the Buddha said that they could not care less about. That would just be one more.
A religion is not about precisely what some founder said, but how it was adopted, intepreted, and developed (including what parts were given precedence and which were ignored).
> Buddha said it is super hard or impossible to achieve Nirvana after 1500-2000 years.
Well, that I can agree with. Also according to the Buddha, there are signs that an enlightened being can display to prove their enlightenment. A simple one is that fire does not affect them. To prove his enlightenment, "Ānanda performed a supernatural accomplishment by diving into the earth and appearing on his seat at the council (or, according to some sources, by flying through the air.)"
Ramana Maharshi got cancer. When the doctor operated to remove the tumor anesthetic was refused. Ramana watched the operation without evident discomfort. He said after that he experienced the sensations of the operation but did not suffer.
Buddhism is not a philosophy based on a magic book or some unprovable god; it’s just people. The Buddha was a normal person, and absolutely could and did make the kinds of mistakes common in his time.
I don’t think that stops it being useful, personally.
I think it depends on your particular fork of Buddhism. It's a pretty open source religion, and some sects and scriptures are more devout to tradition and mysticism than others.
I don’t believe this is the gotcha that you think it is.
Every single school of thought, religion or otherwise, has good and bad parts. Taking the overwhelmingly good aspects of Buddhism to understand how to lead a better life, is not invalidated because the Buddha said one thing you dislike. It’s naivety to desire 100% perfection from everyone/thing.
Many religions claim that their scriptures have some special merit or perfection that goes beyond ordinary schools of thought. (I don't disagree that this is naive; it's nevertheless often a central claim).
You don’t need to believe in any religion, though even theists are very selective followers. The point is to use philosophy from religions/etc to inform your own worldview and improve your life.
My point is, why believe that philosophy has merit, or that you'd be able to distinguish the good parts from the bad parts? (And if you are able to distinguish good from bad philosophy, why would you need an existing religion as a starting point?)
Could you point me to some perfect philosophical writings?
Obviously, the authors must be beyond reproach in their lives. And, do ensure that everything in their writings & speech are “good” before their time, during their time, during our time, and for all future times to come.
Your other point seems to be that it’s better to avoid all this, and start from scratch. It’s good for you that you are able to inform yourself of everything with no materials. The rest of us need something to go off of.
> Could you point me to some perfect philosophical writings? Obviously, the authors must be beyond reproach in their lives. And, do ensure that everything in their writings & speech are “good” before their time, during their time, during our time, and for all future times to come.
I have a lot more faith in an imperfect source that acknowledges itself as such than a source that purports to be perfect but isn't.
I can't assume a disclaimer that contradicts what's explicitly in the main body of the work, no.
Religious philosophy is generally embedded in a paradigm where that religion is correct, and where scripture in particular is perfect and infallible. So it's not at all obvious to say that you can pull value from it outside that paradigm.
I don't know why this good advice is downvoted, and looks like mine will too.
I don't understand why people still consider literature written by human with nowadays language to must be either perfect or it's worthless.
Also how they see a form of government that declared they're adopting one religion teaching and using it as argument proof / point.
We will spiralling down to whataboutism soon like this. Cherry picks the good ones are fine, and people do that everyday. Just don't cherry pick a bad one to justify your agenda and your bad action.
It's like people want these things written down in no-holes legalese. While at the same time people will misinterpret what others are saying (see "straw man argument"; people are quick to jump to conclusions about people about what they say and don't say).
Here's a religious code people can live by: "Don't be a dick". I'm sure that summarizes all the good parts of organized religions and philosophies. It's also the most difficult one to adhere to for a lot of people.
One of the agreed-upon principles common to the largest Buddhist denominations is that our world was not created and is not ruled by an omnipresent, omniscient God.
As for that sutta, the Pali canon is absolutely huge, the Mahayana sutras even more so, the majority of the latter haven’t been translated into English even. Most Buddhists, even historically, do not follow the sutras to the word, they use them as teaching guidance. There is nothing wrong with not accepting a sutra because you don’t think it is a good teaching or one that is helpful to you
EDIT also Buddhists I’ve spoken to generally reject that sutta, Mahayana Buddhists see all Pali suttas as lesser and provisional. The founder of my sect, Dogen, rejected the idea of mappo (age of dharma decline) entirely.
It is not historically accurate to think that all Buddhists generally accept all Buddhist texts and concepts, unless you specifically only mean some of the more hardcore Theravada who accept all of the Pali canon. Unfortunately in the west Buddhism is often conflated with just the Theravada, since the Mahayana seems scarier and more difficult to get into, however the latter is more popular and has developed more historically
Buddism has always adopt in order to stay relevant. There are many ways to achieve enlightenment. Maybe US Buddhists will find their own unique path forward.
There was a great saying by Ajahn Chah, who always seems to be quotable. He said "How come everyone says Buddhism is old-fashioned and needs to be adapted? No-one ever accuses the defilements as being old-fashioned and outdated; no, they're always up-to-date."
Edit: can you please not post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments in general? It looks like you've been doing that repeatedly, unfortunately. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
The way I was taught, suttas/sutras were treated as interesting historical documents, and sometimes as useful aids to understanding. They were not considered to be "gospel" truth, because they are not associated with a practice lineage. That is, there is only a text; there is no handing-down of a lived experience from teacher to practitioner.
My teachers favoured more "modern" texts, such as Asanga's works, and the Prajnaparamita literature. They have practice lineages that can be traced back to their authors. Statements from the sutras/suttas were met with remarks of the form "Very interesting; it may be true, or it may be not true".
Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologists, but within the public sphere they function only as a combined virtue signal and rhetorical weapon. What makes these weapons difficult is that they are so tightly wrapped in an image of compassion such that even those that wield them may not understand their true nature. A clever design.
This is a good example of how anything can be used as a weapon, even compassion. I really wish all these academics pushing the narrative of privilege etc would chill out for a second and just enjoy the world as it is, in all it's messiness. To stop seeing the world as purely an evil constructed on the mass graves of the innocent. Even if it were true (and in some sense it is) this is still the world we have. This is where kids are growing up, people are falling in love, where discoveries are being made. Sometimes you gotta just say 'fuck it' and enjoy the world you have without constantly speculating about how it should be, how it should have been, about whether the fruits you are enjoying were earned with blood. We cannot, in each successive generation, reform ourselves to undo the injustices of the past, not only because it's practically impossible but because the meaning of injustice changes. And society is finite in its malleability. To be sure, some things can be done, within a generation or two. Maybe three. But after a while, what's done is done and you have to move on.
EDIT: It's curious how sometimes a post gets upvoted, then downvoted, then several more cycles. Now its at 1. I'd be curious to know the "velocity" on this one, dang.
Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents and certainly not into ideological flamewar. Those things are not what HN is for and destroy what it is for.
> Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologists, but within the public sphere they function only as a combined virtue signal and rhetorical weapon.
This is so true. It’s a very beautifully expressed feeling I had trouble articulating before. Thank you for putting it into words like this.
It’s also ridiculous to me there is a push to “teach” these concepts to kids when it’s fairly obvious they’ll just abstract them away to something stupid like “man bad” or “white people bad”. I feel like it’s sort of like trying to explain to kids with no CS experience some nuanced tradeoff like, I don’t know, the CAP theorem for example. They’ll probably understand that if you go with AP instead of CP you risk losing data and that’s bad so now we always use CP. All they’ll be left of with is “AP bad, CP good”.
Thanks. George Orwell made this point well in "Animal Farm". The nuance of the initial revolution was gradually lost, and became "four legs good, two legs bad".
While I find some parts of your sympathetic, conflating the left with academia is not really a valid approach. That some (on the left) have picked up on academic usage of some words or models is perhaps more accurate, and the misuse of words and terms. Which is far more prevalent in my experience.
There was an interesting article about some social inequalities where when we talk about something more -is actually making it worse-. Apparently doing sensitivity and diversity trainings have the effect of making outcomes worse or ineffective , counterintuitively (its this part of your comment I find most sympathetic) https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way...
>That some (on the left) have picked up on academic usage of some words or models is perhaps more accurate, and the misuse of words and terms.
That is absolutely true. And there has even been some pushback from the academics who coined these terms. But, in the end, words are tools, and tools meet a need, and there was apparently a great need for a new narrative that explained personal feelings of failure and self loathing. So it was inevitable that these terms would be used in this way. These words, as tools, are also potent for those who desire power, and look for any means to win, including invocation of race and gender stereotypes. It is galling for anyone who values liberty to see this, when the goal has always been to deprecate the prejudice function, and not merely to call the same function with different arguments.
It is fascinating, though, how the desire to improve, to be more virtuous than before, can turn out so badly! It's a real slippery slope situation - we made progress, civil rights, women's rights, interracial marriage, gay marriage, sexual identities, gender identities acknowledging the momentum of racist policies in our demographics...but then it turns into: gender is purely a construct, lets modify children's bodies if they think they're trans, lets force people to use certain pronouns, lets have teachers share their sex lives with kindergarteners, lets give women and students of color the power of professional life and death over white teachers, lets teach reverse CBT. And if you try to make this point, you're called a racist and a bigot! Social justice warriors push an insidious form of injustice that harms everyone. Because, as the GGP put it, it's anti-human.
I recently discovered Sam Harris, and started going down a bit of a rabbit hole that is his body of work. He has his critics, and I haven't spent enough time in his materials to have a fully formed opinion of my own, but I found that following his work unearths some interesting insights about these culture wars.
His arguments about religion and society's collective unwillingness to have an honest conversation about it are compelling. But what's fascinating to me is that he manages to piss off both the religious right and the SJW left, and I think he's onto something important.
The reason he pisses them off is that his fundamental position boils down to: dogmatism is the problem. And no one wants to admit they are dogmatic.
The same instinct in a right-wing pro-life person to shut down any consideration whatsoever that their position is suspect is the same instinct in the SJW who can only see the world as an unjust manifestation of the patriarchy, or systemic racism, etc. This is not to say that those things don't exist or have no impact, but it seems those things have been used to harness the same base behavior we're all capable of, to effectively form what resembles an entirely new religious dogma.
This dogmatism shuts down substantive dialog, and perpetuates the same kinds of problems one finds with folks who insist Jesus is coming back to earth in the next 50 years.
A mindset that removes willingness to engage in conversation - even if the person holding the mindset happens to be right (or at least closer to right than some others) - is a mindset every bit as dangerous and problematic as the mindset held by right-wing extremists.
I'm not trying to just parrot Sam's message here, but he's saying things that I've long believed, and didn't know how to articulate, and the basic takeaway is this: dialogue is the only thing that can change the collective consciousness.
The current trends around identity politics, cancelling people for the things they say, creating taboos so strong that people don't feel comfortable even touching on some topics is the antithesis of liberalism, and I'll repeat what you and GGP said - anti-human. If dialogue is the only path forward, and our current path involves the complete demonization of certain dialogue to the point that you are no longer allowed to participate in the conversation, we are at what can only be called an impasse as a culture.
We should properly put bad ideas to bed, absolutely. We should address systemic issues where they exist, absolutely. We should learn from our major mistakes, absolutely.
But the current climate is somewhat terrifying. One need only try to make the argument I just made on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit to see what I'm talking about. You'll quickly be branded a right-wing or alt-right sympathizer (despite the fact that in terms of policy, I'm about as liberal as they come, identity politics notwithstanding). People will manufacture a version of you that they believe to be true, and then abuse you for it, while feeling righteous and justified in the process.
You state more eloquently what I wanted to respond as a comment. I am not interested in left/right, I am interested in outcomes that make people feel more valued, more part of a community, more prosperous. If there is one thing I know for sure is that entrenching yourself in your insert favourite beliefs here and shutting others out is not helping or helpful.
Certain outcomes seem to be more favorable using typical left wing policies and others using what’s thought of as right wing. Finding out which is which is far more interesting.
Reality has a known liberal bias, yes, only in that liberals tend to believe in science - the one discipline that helps us understand what is objectively real.
I would be careful not to confer this to issues of culture, where dogma currently reigns supreme, and liberals are no less susceptible than conservatives to the kind of thinking that leads absolutely nowhere productive.
Your criticism is fair, but I’m not sure there is a better framing. Between corporations, political elites, and the media, the most influential and highly visible folks that identify as being “on the left” are much more influenced by Judith Butler than by any socialist thinker.
> To stop seeing the world as purely an evil constructed on the mass graves of the innocent. Even if it were true (and in some sense it is) this is still the world we have. [...] To be sure, some things can be done, within a generation or two. Maybe three. But after a while, what's done is done and you have to move on.
Putting aside the rhetorical tools you're discussing, what would you say to people who currently feel the effects of these historical, and contemporary oppressions? People with unwanted pregnancies who find themselves unable to access abortions, African-Americans who are descended from families that were unable to purchase property they would have been able to afford due to redlining and are thus at a disadvantage, Gen X Jews whose parents were denied entry to elite schools and whose families thus suffered economically, gay and trans people who are currently, in the US, facing a government that has all but stated it wants to eliminate even the tenuous hold on legal existence they have?
I am all for telling people to find the good in the world. There is a lot of it! But some of these negative phenomena that sociologists describe have real consequences for real people in the present day, and I don't really see how "just stop thinking about it" is a solution for them.
>what would you say to people who currently feel the effects of these historical, and contemporary oppressions?
I would have quoted me a bit more generously. This is what I would tell them (and myself, since we are all oppressed, and all of our ancestors were oppressed, at some point, by someone):
>We cannot, in each successive generation, reform ourselves to undo the injustices of the past, not only because it's practically impossible but because the meaning of injustice changes. And society is finite in its malleability. To be sure, some things can be done, within a generation or two. Maybe three. But after a while, what's done is done and you have to move on.
Fair enough - I didn't mean to imply that you hadn't said that, the quote was merely to delimit the area I was addressing.
Am I correct, then, in thinking your response to people currently harmed by social structures they have no choice in interacting with is, basically, "I agree that this sucks, but I don't support changing anything to fix it."?
> Am I correct, then, in thinking your response to people currently harmed by social structures they have no choice in interacting with is, basically, "I agree that this sucks, but I don't support changing anything to fix it."?
I don’t know about the guy you’re asking but the way I would tackle this question is, first by point out in some cases the “harm” is only perceived.
To give you an example of this, a claim often made is “trans kids are being harmed due to lack of access to hormones/surgery”. I find this revolting. I would consider, for this example at least, the current system is doing good in protecting them, certainly it is not harming them.
For me and many people, changing this would mean creating a social structure that is harmful.
What will happen if the system is now changed to allow children to take hormones but in a few decades this will be broadly considered a harmful social structure?
Another point I would bring up is, there are various ways problems can be addressed. Asking for change begs the question what change precisely? It is very possible agreement on the existence of the problem can be reached while the solution remains contentious.
A more accurate description of reality would be I think “Some problems exist and some problems are nothing more than attempts at getting power, privilege or attention. And while the problems that are generally agreed upon to exist should be fixed, the solution is often unclear and the proposals open up their own set of problems”
> To give you an example of this, a claim often made is “trans kids are being harmed due to lack of access to hormones/surgery”. I find this revolting. I would consider, for this example at least, the current system is doing good in protecting them, certainly it is not harming them.
Then I probably don't care about your opinion on this - we are almost certainly speaking from completely different ontological perspectives.
I asked the person I was replying to, because they seemed to have values at least somewhat compatible with mine, and thus I expect to learn something from them.
Fair enough. But, something has cough my attention.
> we are almost certainly speaking from completely different ontological perspectives
Do you consider me ontologically evil? Am I, as some people on the internet often refer to those with my sense of mortality, “a demon wearing human flash”?
I'm not sure why you would think that, as it's not what I said at all. Rather, I suspect based on this opinion that I disagree with some things you take as axiomatic, and vice versa, and therefore we have little to learn from arguing with each other.
When you said "ontological" I was reminded of a phrase I often encountered in leftist circles, the assertion some people are "ontologically evil". Precisely because they operate from a different set of axioms.
> therefore we have little to learn from arguing with each other
In a way I agree but at the same time I can't help but think exploring the axioms underlying moral foundations is important. Either to come to a shared set as a society or to construct a societal machanism that will allow people with a contradictory sense of morality to co-exist. To be honest, reaching a shared set of moral axioms seems to be a lost cause to me. But, perhaps the co-existance mechanism is still possible.
> consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing
I’d suggest that it’s not about those things for the accusers themselves. It’s simply about gaining power. And they do it by preying upon “personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing” in other well-meaning people. They’ve discovered that yelling “cultural appropriation” works quite well with people who are constantly looking for other people to feel sorry for - which of a kind of projection.
I don't think so. I think it really is about guilt and shame, because these people just rebranded Catholicism without realizing it. Most of them probably grew up Catholic I bet, and internalized Catholic ideology to such a degree that they can't help but view everything through that lens.
If so, they missed the key part of Catholicsm/Christianity: the death of Jesus atones for our sin, guilt, and shame.
I've slowly come to the opinion that it is about a power play / emotional manipulation, because there is no way to atone. If you're white (for example), you're just an oppressor by the structure of society you were born into, so the sin is membership in a structurally advantaged group defined by race. You can't change your race nor change the past, so the best you can do is hope that supporting the political agenda of your accusers is good enough.
self-loathing is technically a type of sin… but that doesn’t mean peoples conceptions match the teachings (they often don’t).
CCC 405
“ Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.
It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin — an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.”
Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”
Only narcissists and not very aware people are able to "enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness."
Because that's what it takes to ignore abusive levels of inequality and systemic threats to the continued survival of the species.
The point is not about what happened in the past, it's about what is still happening now - and how the narratives from the past continue to be used to justify it.
Ignoring this is neither compassionate nor realistic - although it is toxic, pretty much by definition.
I'd say "only people who live in their parents basements and haven't put in The Work are able to make comments like this", but then I'd look like the big dumb-dumb.
Complaining without action is equivalent to ignoring it.
Sharing the same news headline everyone's already read with your "This is bad!" caption isn't helping. We all know, we can read the words and see it's bad.
Enjoying the world in all its messiness means engaging with it - not this woke schtick of avoiding touching the entire subject because of some trigger word, then spewing generic, inactionable drivel like "did you know the world is bad?"
Yes, we know. We all know. Every single one of us. Welcome to the conversation.
Work on yourself so you're not bringing more misery and uselessness into an already-miserable world that needs help.
> Only narcissists and not very aware people are able to "enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness."
I do not believe myself to be a narcissist and I think I am at least somewhat aware of the world and it’s problems.
Yet, despite this, I do “ enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness”.
I think what is preventing you from doing the same is ideology and close mindedness. From the comment, you come across like a fundamentalist christian refusing to enjoy life because “the world is sinful”.
Enjoy life man. Since we’re on the article, take a page from the Buddhist philosophy and let go, for a moment at least :)
It’s funny you say this, because it’s precisely because of my fundamentalist Christian worldview that allows me to love and accept the world as it is.
Sounds like you’ve had some bad run-ins with Christian fundamentalists. Sure the world is broken, but most Christians realize the world is inherently beautiful (not to be confused with ‘good’).
If the God of the universe died to save it, there’s got to be fundamental value there. Therefore if someone thinks the world is ugly and can’t enjoy it, that’s an internal thing they gotta fix, not an immutable, self-evident truth about the world… again it’s precisely because of the Bible that I believe these things.
What you describing doesn’t sound fundamentalist to me.
I was referring more to the sort of people who, for example, see homosexuals having gay pride and start worrying it’s the end times and they must cleanse the world through adherence to their religion or something like that.
Let me re-write the comment I was responding as a fundamentalist would write it.
—-
Only sinners and heathens are able to "enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness."
Because that's what it takes to ignore abusive levels of homosexuality and systemic threats to the continued survival of the church.
The point is not about what happened in the past, it's about what is still happening now - and how the narratives from the past continue to be used to justify it.
Ignoring this is neither compassionate nor realistic - although it is heretical, pretty much by definition.
—-
I am 100% percent convinced that there are fundamentalist christians or islamists or whatever who would read that re-written comment as go “oh yeah, that makes complete sense”.
> Only narcissists and not very aware people are able to "enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness."
I don't know if you meant to come off as harshly as you did, but this is needlessly reductive, which is especially ironic in a discussion about Buddhism.
What you propose is that there are two extremes: enjoyment of the world while ignoring suffering and self mortification while trying to solve it. These are, in essence, the two extremes which the Buddha argued against in favor of the Middle Path[0]:
> There is an addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is an addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.
Avoiding both these extremes, the Perfect One has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.
I don't think that OP is saying we should ignore suffering and not try to address it, but they are saying that self-flagellation is unhelpful and toxic, and we should approach suffering with a forward eye not a backward one.
If it requires being “not very aware” to enjoy life without frothing at the mouth in anger at all the messiness of the world, I consider myself a proud narcissist / “not very aware” person.
I think you’ve missed the commenters main point which is that all this hand-wringing about how terrible things are—isn’t actively solving any problems we have today, or any problems we had yesterday. I would even dare to guess it won’t solve the problems we’ll have tomorrow.
Right, but we've built a world where people are loudly obsessed with issues they have (infinitesimal) control over because if they paid attention to issues closer to home they might look up from their phones, and the advertisers can't have that.
Except we do have control over it, if we didn't people wouldn't be complaining so loudly about being shunned for the biggotted and ignorant crap that comes out of their mouths.
Except we do have control over it, if we didn't people wouldn't be complaining so loudly about being shunned for the sinful and heretical crap that comes out of their mouths.
A puritan explaining the importance of enforcing moral cohesion - cca 1750
She writes from a race-essentialist framing to a degree and that drives me crazy.
"white Americans" "white Westerners" x6
There's a sort of cultural appropriation shame being layered here---as if it's bad to have light skin and be interested in Buddhism, or adapt Buddhism to your existing worldview.
If it were non-white people who predominantly led this movement in the US, she would be praising their adaptability as they syncretized a religion to meet their needs.
And are there really no black or latino or asian practitioners of this kind of Buddhism? Of course there are.
There's a "cool" factor of foregrounding race these days and I don't think it's healthy. Westernized Buddhism isn't exclusive to any race, nor is being "Western". Why reinforce the lines between racial categories like this, further reifying them?
That said, I appreciate the critique of corporation-as-organized-religion. The decline in institutional religion in America has left exactly the void that is being filled here, but with probably more fucked up motives than your typical church. At least when you would leave your employment, you wouldn't get kicked out of your congregation. But if your employment _is_ your "congregation"...
Separation of church and work might not be a bad principle.